EDITORIAL: Depression study leads to advances

Aug. 16--When he was director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Tom Insel lamented the lack of known biomarkers for psychiatric diseases and the need for better science on mental illness. He marveled that science had unlocked so many secrets of the heart yet still knew so little about the brain. A new study shows that progress is being made.

The study of about 460,000 people, some diagnosed with the disease and others unaffected by it, found variations associated with depression on 15 areas of the human genome. Time magazine described the findings as "the bad lines of genetic code that may lead to the disease." The study, published by Nature Genetics, was conducted by researchers at the Pfizer pharmaceutical company, Massachusetts General Hospital and 23andMe, a genetic testing company that contributed patient data.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group, about 16 million Americans experienced depression last year, with women more likely to be affected than men. Despite suspicions of a genetic link, telltale signs have been elusive. NAMI says on its website that identical twins will both experience depression only 30 percent of the time, and researchers in the new study noted that previous efforts to find genetic links came up short.

The new findings may lead to new strategies for preventing and treating depression. But there are other depression-related mysteries to unravel, such as why people with depression have an elevated risk of Parkinson's disease and how medications that treat depression by manipulating neurotransmitters in the brain can be made to work more quickly or effectively.

In the future, more of such questions may be tackled by innovative research partnerships involving hospitals and the private sector, with the help of big data sets of the kind amassed by 23andMe.

--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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