According to an article for MSNBC by Steve Mitchell, we could be on the brink of genetic blood testing for mental illness.
"A blood test could be used to diagnose and assess the severity of certain mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, according to a new study. But some experts think this raises ethical concerns about prying into a person's mental status.
Lab tests that can accurately detect mental illnesses have long been considered the “Holy Grail” of psychiatry. Currently, bipolar disorder and other conditions such as depression are diagnosed based on the patient's description of their symptoms and the physician's judgment, sometimes making it difficult to get an accurate diagnosis or determine the severity of a patient's condition. But now researchers have shown that 10 genes that can be detected in the blood could provide a better way to assess a patient.
“Patients aren’t sure how ill they really are, and neither is the clinician — sometimes dismissing their symptoms, sometimes overestimating them,” said Dr. Alexander Niculescu, III, a psychiatrist at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, who led the research published Tuesday by the journal Molecular Psychiatry. “Having an objective test for disease state, disease severity, and especially to measure response to treatment, would be a big step forward.”
Read the rest of the article here.
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