Monday, April 9, 2018

Sex Specific Depression Gene Alteration

    Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical school have identified specific gene changes in both men and women who suffer from major depression. The researches noticed a total of 776 differently expressed genes in men with depression and 882 in women but the most interesting part is that of all these different genes only 21 overlapped between the two sexes. In almost all areas where women showed increased expression of a gene men showed reduced expression and vice versa. Due to examining postmortem tissue the Researchers were unable to distinguish to what degree these gene expressions affected the disorder simply that they were there consistently.
  
    This is so important because it opens up new areas to investigate how depression occurs and what can be done to effectively treat it as it affects millions of people across the globe and not every available treatment option works well for everyone. For starters this shows that treatment for men and women may have to differ greatly as they show two distinctly different sets of causes at least at a genetic level that may be key to creating a universal 'cure' to depression. Obviously a lot more work need to be done and other avenues have to be explored but this is a very promising discovery for both genetics and psychology.


Article - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321245.php
Study - http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(18)30065-9/abstract

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