中文摘要：

抑郁症是一种以显著而持久的心境低落为主要特征的情感障碍，通常伴随情绪低落、意志活动减退、自杀观念和行为，给病人和亲属带来了极大的痛苦和负担。随着生活压力的增大，我国抑郁症的发病率呈现上升趋势。最近越来越多的研究表明，催产素及受体基因在抑郁症的防治中发挥着重要的作用。本文总结了近年来关于催产素及受体基因与抑郁症的研究进展，并提出催产素对抑郁症的潜在治疗机制，为抑郁症等精神疾病的发病机制及临床治疗等领域提供了新的研究方向。但目前的实验研究尚有不足，还需大量的临床实验和研究，来进一步明确其临床治疗机制，为抑郁症的防治提供新的依据。

英文摘要：

Depression is an affective disorder characterized by a long-lasting state of low moods, usually accompanied with feel- ing down, volitional activity drops and suicidal ideation and behavior. It brings patients and their families great pain and burden. Because of the increasing social pressure in China, the incidence of depression has been increasing. Recently, more and more studies showed that oxytocin and oxytocin receptor genes play an important role in preventing and treating depression. This paper reviews the major advance in the research concerning the relation among oxytocin, oxytocin receptor genes and depression, and proposes a new approach of the treatment of depression with oxytocin, which might reveal a possible pathogenesis mechanism of depression and provide a novel clinical therapy of depression. However, further clinical researches need to be conducted to confirm this mechanism.