Study: Depression and schizophrenia can be detected in blood tests

A study published early April in the scientific journal Science Advances it’s possible revolution in mental health in several ways. The research aims to increase the understanding of the causes of psychiatric diseases through the study of biomarkers. As a result, various disorders, such as depressionschizophrenia and anorexia It can be detected in routine blood tests.

Theoretically, a biomarker is any signal found in body fluids. like blood – can be used as an indicator of the presence of certain disease states in the body. In the case of mental illness, first author of the study William Reay explains to his website Speech: “One solution is to analyze genetic effects. both in mental illness and in substances measured in the blood”

How was the study done to correlate psychiatric diseases with biomarkers?

The new study used genetics to link 50 factors commonly measured in routine blood tests (such as cholesterol and white blood cell counts) to nine mental health disorders: major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anorexia, obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism and Tourette’s syndrome.

Using data from large studies conducted by other scientists, the research confirmed the existence of genetic correlation, that is, the effect of DNA changes on the emergence of a mental illness. This means, for example, that “some processes in our body can affect both depression and white blood cells. [leucócitos]”says Reay.

The authors now hope to conduct further research and soon this technology may be available to the population.

ARTICLE – ScienceAdvances – DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj8969.