Word: depressionitis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
A new study published on June 16 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) now threatens to send researchers back to the drawing board. The meta-analysis of 14 prior studies concludes that the so-called depression gene - a variant of a serotonin-transporter gene called 5-HTTLPR...
The discovery by Duke psychologist Avshalom Caspi of a "depression gene," which was among the first to be associated with mental illness - a notably difficult class of diseases to pin down, genetically speaking - inspired dozens of similar studies. While many researchers had suspected that 5-HTTLPR played a significant role...
But the new JAMA study, which reviewed 14 studies involving 14,250 participants on the interaction between the serotonin-transporter gene and stressful life events, found no such association with depression risk. The study goes on to caution that any potential use of 5-HTTLPR as a screening tool for...
"Meta-analyses can be a steamroller," says Alexandre Todorov, a genetic epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., whose 2007 peer-reviewed study was included in the JAMA piece. (While Todorov's study found an association between the gene and depression, it was based on a different variant - the...
Where most genetics researchers do agree, however, is on the fact that uncovering the genetic roots of depression - and most diseases, for that matter - is a complex task. "We have about 30,000 genes, and it is hard to pick just one and analyze it," says Dr. Hans Joergen Grabe...