In addition, mood disorder-related sex differences are observed in community-based epidemiological studies, where the factor of seeking treatment is removed (Kornstein et al., 2000; Festinger et al., 2008; Leach et al., 2008) and findings of low somatostatin in the amygdala appear more robust in postmortem studies of female MDD subjects (Tripp et al., 2012), suggesting that gender/sex may represent a biological predisposing factor, or at least a moderating factor, in the intrinsic vulnerability of the somatostatin system. Here, SST is linked to major depressive disorder.