Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Mental illness connected to Genetics



It has been speculated that the genetic make of a person may affect their mental stability. Dr. Smoller a professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital was an author of a paper that studied the genes involved in the signal process in the brain. The reason the researchers suspected a relation between genes and a persons mental disorders is,  because the case of twins.  It is vital that the researchers found specific genes that coded the specific signal system. There might be a way to found how the signals are getting disrupted and reverse the process.

The studied began with a looking at the genome of patient with  psychiatric illnesses.  Then it was compared to patients who did not have any psychiatric illnesses. The researchers could compare the psychiatric illnesses and determine if there was any variance to the other strand. It was speculated that two disorders involve the calcium channel. There are more studies being done to see if calcium channel blockers could affect the disorder.

1 comment:

  1. Personally I feel that mental illness are one of the worst kinds and I am sure that there are many heritable genes that carry these illnesses. If genetics can be used to counteract these genes preventative medicines or practices can be taken for people at risk of getting these diseases.

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