Translational Psychiatry. I know that the blood test can also predict which therapies will be most successful for patients, and lays the groundwork for one day identifying people who are especially vulnerable to depression even before they’ve gone through a depressive episode. Perhaps just as important, said lead investigator Eva Redei, Ph, is the potential the test has for taking most of the stigma out of a depression diagnosis. She said, there’s less stigma about having the disease and getting treatment, when depression can be confirmed with a blood test like any other physical ailment. Past studies show that it should take an average of two to 40 months to diagnose depression if it gets diagnosed really, the most effective way to treat depression is to treat it early. You see, redei’s depression blood test could lead to faster and more accurate diagnoses, thereby transforming the way depression is treated. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration, laboratories across the could incorporate the test into their battery of routine exams, Therefore if Redei’s findings are independently replicated and confirmed.
Redei’s test, however, can be done by any clinical laboratory anywhere, just like a cholesterol test, Redei explained. So it’s in contrast to MDDScore, a depression blood test owned by Ridge Diagnostics that was announced in Because the test is proprietary to Ridge Diagnostics, doctors have to submit samples to the company’s lab in North Carolina, where the company analyzes the blood and sends back results. Redei’s study compared the blood samples of 32 patients who had been diagnosed with depression in the traditional way with samples taken from 32 people without depression. Oftentimes she found nine RNA blood markers the molecules that carry out DNA’s instructions that differed significantly between the two groups, that she consequently used as the basis for the depression diagnosis. Retesting their blood, Redei did tell which patients had benefitted the most from therapy, just by examining the changes in their RNA markers. Actually, the depressed patients went through 18 cognitive weeks behavioral therapy, a typical treatment for depression. Redei also noticed that there were three RNA markers that didn’t change in depressed patients, can be markers that show if a person is predisposed to depression.
Zachary Kaminsky, Ph, of the Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine, wasn’t involved with the study but is excited about its potential implications for depression treatment.
Kaminsky is a pioneer in blood tests to predict suicide risk, and although he and Redei measure very different things in their tests, he sees that both researchers have similar goals when it boils down to creating biological tests for mental illnesses. That said, as an example, Kaminsky pointed out, the study will have been more scientifically rigorous if it had used another patient group to confirm the blood test, as opposed to using really similar participants to both create and hereupon test the predictions. Kaminsky also pointed out that Redei and Mohr’s research still needs to be independently validated by other patient populations to confirm that it works. Nonetheless, by bringing psychiatry into the 21st century, Redei said, despite the research hurdles she still needs to overcome, Redei is confident that her test can make a positive impact on the millions who struggle with depression not only by making treatment more precise.
As indicated by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, major depressive disorder affects an estimated 7 the percent population and is the leading cause of disability for Americans ages 15 to 44. We’ll get to the stage where there won’t be any discrimination between physical illness and mental illness.