TLR4 and major depressive disorder: 2022; J. Hu et al. 2019; Y. Wang et al. 2023). Studies have shown that Fructus arctii can alleviate inflammatory conditions such as sore throat, rashes, asthma, diabetes, and cancers (Y. Li et al. 2022; B. He et al. 2019; Gao, Yang, and Zuo 2018). Arctigenin, in particular, has been demonstrated to alleviate depression by suppressing neuroinflammation via the HMGB1/toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR4)/NF‐κB pathway (Xu et al. 2020).