He has had his Master's degree in Affective Disorders between 2019 and 2020 at King's College London, as well as his PhD between 2021 and 2025. He works as a clinical research assistant from 2025. He demonstrates expertise in large-scale cohort analysis (UK Biobank), interventional inpatient studies, and clinical trials, with multiple first-author publications in high-impact psychiatry journals. He is skilled in advanced statistical modelling and programming using R and Python, and meta-analytic methods. He is a clinical research assistant for HOME and BDEP trials studying on tDCS treating unipolar and bipolar depression.

Research Interests

• Late-life depression
• Cognitive impairment
• Dementia
• Psychotherapies for depression
• tDCS for unipolar and bipolar depression

Research Groups

HOME and bDEP clinical trials, CI Prof Cynthia Fu

Expertise and Public Engagement 

Associate Fellow, Advanced HE (AFHEA)

Key Publications

Xue, L., Bocharova, M., Young, A. H., & Aarsland, D. (2024). Cognitive improvement in late-life depression treated with vortioxetine and duloxetine in an eight-week randomized controlled trial: The role of age at first onset and change in depressive symptoms. Journal of affective disorders, 361, 74-81.

Xue, L., Lewis, E., Bocharova, M., Young, A. H., & Aarsland, D. (2025). Decreased neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio predicted cognitive improvement in late-life depression treated with vortioxetine: findings from an eight-week randomized controlled trial. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 126, 53-58.

Xue L, Bocharova M, Young AH, Aarsland D. Late-onset depression predicts cognitive impairment and subsequent dementia among older adults with major depressive disorder: findings from UK Biobank and primary care linked data. BJPsych Open. 2026;12(2):e88. doi:10.1192/bjo.2026.10995

Jiang, L., Xue, L., & Juruena, M. F. (2025). The impact of early life stress on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in unipolar major depression: A systematic review. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 107607.

Lagerberg, P. J., Xue, L., Woodham, R. D., Selvaraj, S., Lajmi, N., Hobday, H., ... & Fu, C. H. (2025). Factor analysis of treatment acceptability in double-blind randomised clinical trial of home-based transcranial direct current stimulation in major depression and in healthy individuals. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 02698811251399545.

Ni, P., Xue, L., Cai, J., Wen, M., & He, J. (2021). Improving visual perspective-taking performance in children with autism spectrum conditions: Effects of embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. Autism, 25(1), 125-136."