Prince Alireza Pahlavi, younger son of the late Shah of Iran, shot himself in his apartment in the Boston city's South End neighborhood, according to media reports.

"It is with immense grief that we would like to inform our compatriots of the passing away of Prince Alireza Pahlavi," Reza Pahlavi, the Shah's older son, said on his website, rezapahlavi.org.

Pahlavi, 44, took his life early on Tuesday at his Boston home "plunging his family and friends into great sorrow," the note said. It said he struggled for years to overcome depression over the fate of Iran and the loss of his father and sister.

Police were investigating a suspected suicide that occurred shortly after 2am local time, the Boston media reported.

The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and died in Egypt a year later. His daughter Leila died in a London hotel room in 2001 of a drug overdose.

Born in Tehran in 1966, Alireza Pahlavi attended schools in Iran before traveling in 1979 to the US, where he obtained degrees at Princeton and Columbia universities. Pahlavi had attended Harvard University in pursuit of a PhD in Ancient Iranian studies.-Reuters