Dr Livia A Carvalho

Profile

ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8862-0148 

Dr Livia A Carvalho is a Senior Lecturer in Psychoneuroimmunology in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London. She leads the Translational Pharmacology Research Group, which she established in 2016, and is Co-Deputy Director of the Social Resilience Hub. Her work brings together translational pharmacology, psychiatry, immunology and population health to understand why mental illness is associated with poorer physical-health outcomes and unequal treatment trajectories. 

Dr Carvalho trained in neuroscience and clinical pharmacology at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She subsequently undertook psychoneuroimmunology training at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, and in the Psychobiology Group at University College London. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Clinical Research (FICR), Cross-Hub Health Inequalities Lead for the UKRI Mental Health Platform, and serves on the Regulatory, Ethics and Compliance Board and the Social Sciences and Humanities Board of the EU-funded NEXTGEN study. 

Her research aims to identify clinically useful biomarkers and treatment targets that can support more precise, equitable prevention, prescribing and monitoring in depression and severe mental illness. 

Research

Dr Carvalho investigates the immune, inflammatory, metabolic and neuroendocrine mechanisms linking mental illness with adverse cardiometabolic and clinical outcomes. Her programme asks how these pathways are modified by treatment, lifestyle and social context, and how they can be translated into actionable strategies for people with common and severe mental illness. 

A central focus is biological embedding: the process through which deprivation, early-life adversity, loneliness, social exclusion and other forms of social adversity shape immune-metabolic regulation, illness course and health inequalities. This work moves beyond describing associations to examine mechanisms that may inform stratified care, drug repurposing and prevention of physical illness. 

Current research themes

• Immunophenotyping and biomarker discovery in common and severe mental illness, including treatment-resistant depression.
• Inflammation, glucocorticoid signalling, immune-cell function and metabolic dysregulation as mechanisms of treatment response and physical-health risk.
• Social adversity, health inequalities and the biological pathways through which social conditions influence mental and cardiometabolic health trajectories.
• Comparative effectiveness, drug repurposing and treatment optimisation using linked electronic healthcare data and population cohorts.
• Lifestyle and behavioural interventions, including exercise, and their effects on immune regulation and clinical outcomes. 

Methods and platforms

Her group integrates prospective clinical cohorts and trials with electronic healthcare records, population datasets and experimental models. Methods include clinical phenotyping; longitudinal and outcomes research; immune-cell phenotyping and functional assays; biomarker discovery and validation; proteomic, metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses; and causal-inference approaches. This cross-disciplinary approach enables discovery to be evaluated across experimental, clinical and real-world settings. 

Research leadership and collaboration

Dr Carvalho leads and contributes to multidisciplinary programmes spanning clinical pharmacology, psychiatry, immunology, epidemiology and data science. She welcomes applications of prospective PhD students worldwide, collaboration with clinicians, researchers, methodologists, industry partners and patient and public contributors interested in immunopsychiatry, health inequalities, biomarkers, treatment response, drug repurposing and cardiometabolic health in mental illness. 

She is particularly interested in developing collaborations that connect mechanistic biological studies with real-world evidence and that test whether social context modifies the effectiveness and safety of treatment strategies. 

Selected contributions

• Pioneering work on inflammation and glucocorticoid-related mechanisms in depression and antidepressant response.
• Research establishing links between immune dysregulation, depressive symptoms and cardiometabolic risk across clinical and population-based studies.
• Translational studies investigating immunomodulatory and lifestyle-related pathways as potential targets for improving mental and physical-health outcomes.
• Leadership of programmes examining psychosocial stress, social adversity and structural inequalities as upstream contributors to biological and clinical risk. 

Editorial roles, memberships and recognition

Dr Carvalho is an Associate Editor for Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (since 2018) and the Journal of Psychosomatic Research (since 2024). She is a member of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society, British Pharmacological Society and British Association for Psychopharmacology. 

Her awards include the 2026 Precision Mind Prize Award in Psychiatric Biomarkers, the NARSAD/Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Young Investigator Award and ECNP-ACNP Exchange Award, and awards from the American Psychosomatic Society and British Association for Psychopharmacology. 

Publications

Selected papers

• Bhui K, Clesse C, Rahman S, Hosang G, Gracey B, Loud F, Kirwin S, Randall D, Carvalho LA, Yaqoob MM. Depression in dialysis patients with end-stage kidney disease: investigating the role of psychosocial stressors, co-occurring medical conditions and demographic influences. BJPsych Open. 2026. Accepted.
• Markatou EA, Knowles P, Carvalho LA, Chronaki C. Expressing diversity of health datasets in the European Health Data Space. Book chapter. 2025.
• Souza-Teodoro LH, Davies NM, Warren HR, Andrade LHSG, Carvalho LA. DHEA and response to antidepressant treatment: a Mendelianrandomisation analysis. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 2024.
• Weston G, Zilanawala A, Webb E, Carvalho LA, McMunn A. Work hours, weekend working, nonstandard work schedules and sleep quantity and quality: findings from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. BMC Public Health. 2024.
• Jayakumar S, Jennings S, Halvorsrud K, Clesse C, Yaqoob MM, Carvalho LA, Bhui K. Systematic review and meta-analysis of inflammation in depressive illness and symptoms in chronic and end-stage kidney disease. Psychological Medicine. 2022.
• Clesse C, Jayakumar S, Yaqoob MM, Carvalho LA, Bhui K. Investigating inflammation in depression in the chronically ill: a theoretical model. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. 2022;52(3):247-252.
• Teodoro LH, Andrade LH, Carvalho LA. Could dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) be a novel target for depression? Journal of Affective Disorders Reports. 2022. 

Preprints

• Jesuthasan J, ter Kuile AR, Roiser J, Carvalho LA, Pitman A, Chopade S, Finan C, Schmidt AF, Pingault JB. Genetic evidence for repurposing immunomodulatory drugs for major depressive disorder. medRxiv preprint; submitted to the American Journal of Psychiatry. 2026.
• Romualdo-Perez CI, Khandaker G, Sanderson E, Lau JYF, Carvalho LA. Genetic predisposition to loneliness increases schizophrenia and depression risk through inflammatory pathways: a Mendelian randomisation study. medRxiv preprint; under review at Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2026.
• Romualdo-Perez CI, Smith G, Khandaker G, Carvalho LA. Genetic evidence implicates IL-6/IL-6R and IL-1RA pathways in antidepressant response: a Mendelian randomisation study. Submitted to Biological Psychiatry. 2026.
• Alves CHF, Coutinho-Lourenco F, Wang Y-P, et al., Carvalho LA, Andrade LH. Immune disturbances cluster around a specific depressive phenotype under conditions of structural adversity. Under review at BBI Integrative. 2026.
• Duperrex C, Smith G, Prokopi N, et al., Carvalho LA. Depression in haemodialysis may identify a stress-immune phenotype with clinical relevance for mortality risk. Submitted to Psychological Medicine. 2026. 
  
  

Collaborators

Teaching

Our Translational Pharmacology Research Group is currently accepting PhD and MSc applications in the area of biopsychosocial factors of disease. Dr Carvalho teaches across pharmacology, psychoneuroimmunology and the biopsychosocial determinants of health. She leads and contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching within the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, including clinical pharmacology, neuroscience, trauma, and the biopsychosocial aspects of disease. She developed and led the integration of a longitudinal biopsychosocial framework across the MBBS Curriculum 2030, embedding it throughout Years 1 to 5 to help students understand how biological, psychological and social determinants interact to influence disease, treatment response and patient outcomes. This innovative framework has also been extended to postgraduate teaching in Neuroscience and Trauma programmes, creating an interdisciplinary approach that links contemporary biomedical science with patient-centred clinical practice. Dr Carvalho has supervised 10 PhD students as primary supervisor, all of whom submitted on time or remain on track to complete on time and currently supervises one PhD student as primary supervisor and two PhD students as secondary supervisor. Her supervision aims to support trainees to develop rigorous, interdisciplinary and translational research skills. Former trainees have progressed to academic, clinical research and industry careers, reflecting her commitment to developing the next generation of translational scientists.