post by Bill Gardner
One of the privileges and joys of my life is that part of my job is doing research with my wife, Dr. Kathleen Pajer. Here is the abstract from an article of her's and her colleague Eva Redei (I contributed some writing and statistics):
Early-onset major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious and prevalent psychiatric illness in adolescents and young adults. Current treatments are not optimally effective. Biological markers of early-onset MDD could increase diagnostic specificity, but no such biomarker exists. Our innovative approach to biomarker discovery for early-onset MDD combined results from genome-wide transcriptomic profiles in the blood of two animal models of depression, representing the genetic and the environmental, stress-related, etiology of MDD. We carried out unbiased analyses of this combined set of 26 candidate blood transcriptomic markers in a sample of 15–19-year-old subjects with MDD (N=14) and subjects with no disorder (ND, N=14). A panel of 11 blood markers differentiated participants with early-onset MDD from the ND group. Additionally, a separate but partially overlapping panel of 18 transcripts distinguished subjects with MDD with or without comorbid anxiety. Four transcripts, discovered from the chronic stress animal model, correlated with maltreatment scores in youths. These pilot data suggest that our approach can lead to clinically valid diagnostic panels of blood transcripts for early-onset MDD, which could reduce diagnostic heterogeneity in this population and has the potential to advance individualized treatment strategies.
This is really preliminary: translational, but not yet close to clinical application. What is exciting is the possibility of a for-real biological assay for depression.
do you have a link to your wife speaking on the CBC?
Btw, I think this stuff is super cool/important, but has such a dangerous possibility of being misused. I'm thinking insurance companies refusing to acknowledge someone has depression because there are no pathologic findings, or the converse of insisting someone MUST be depressed even if they are quite certain they aren't. Keep plowing ahead, but please be careful.
Posted by: Will | 04/18/2012 at 11:50 AM
Will, I don't have a link. The show link is http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2012/04/16/the-monday-edition-22/, but they haven't highlighted her interview. Possibly they edit different versions for different regions, and her segment was in the Atlantic but not the national cut.
Your ethical questions are of course well placed, will respond this afternoon in a follow-up post.
Posted by: Bill Gardner | 04/18/2012 at 12:55 PM