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Psychiatric diseases have common genetic "roots"
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Six years ago, a team of genetic scientists from nineteen different countries began a large-scale genetic and psychiatric study aimed at studying the nature of common psychiatric diseases. The aim of the study was to identify genetic features that suggest the occurrence of nervous disorders and neuropsychiatric diseases. During the study, doctors found out how a person's genetic characteristics could influence the appearance of psychiatric illnesses in him.
The experiment involved more than 35 000 mentally ill and more than 28 000 healthy adults. The authors of the study say that today this is the most ambitious research that simultaneously captures psychiatry, genetics, and neuropathology: both in terms of the number of people taking part, and in time.
More than seven years ago, the teaching faced one of the mysteries that accompany the study of psychiatric diseases: with identical genetic features, there are many psychiatric diseases. This conclusion, it can be said, somewhat discouraged the scientists. Even earlier, when studying, for example, twin diseases, scientists were surprised by such facts that, with the same genetic preconditions, twins suffered from various diseases: one could be schizophrenic, and the second at the same time had bipolar disorder. Families have long been known in which the majority of relatives were susceptible to psychiatric illnesses: family members with the same genetic mutations suffered from a variety of psychiatric ailments.
Initially, among scientists, it was widely believed that such cases are exceptions to the rules and a rarity. It is the disagreements and disputes of specialists that led to the need to conduct a large-scale large-scale study that would help to clarify the patterns between the genetic characteristics of a person and the propensity to psychiatric illnesses.
The results of a statistically correct six-year study have shown that several psychiatric diseases actually have common genetic "roots". Doctors say exactly about the following diseases: autism, depressive-manic psychosis or bipolar disorder, clinical depression, schizophrenia, clinical attention deficit and even hyperactivity. The head of the study says that at the moment, science does not know all possible genes, and further research can show other genes that will be common to other psychiatric diseases.
On the other hand, scientists argue that not all genetic mutations can be dangerous for a person's mental health. Only some parts of the DNA during the mutation carry the possible risk that a person may be susceptible to psychiatric ailments.
Doctors believe that this study will open new horizons for geneticists who, after receiving the results of the experiment, will be able to study in more detail the interaction of genes and diseases of the nervous system and brain. In addition, optimistic researchers are talking about the possible now genetic therapy, by which some psychiatric diseases can be prevented or cured at the genetic level. On the other hand, other researchers believe that genetics does not contribute to the development of the disease, but only creates a "baseline", which may prove to be a fertile ground for schizophrenia, for example.