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In a notable advancement for psychiatric research, a team based in the United States has identified a shared genetic underpinning across eight psychiatric disorders, as revealed by a study in the esteemed journal Cell
Scientists scrutinized particular gene variants and their involvement during the development of the brain. These genetic elements are not fleeting; they persist over time, influencing several stages of brain development, posing as promising treatment targets that could concurrently combat multiple psychiatric conditions.
Groundbreaking Perspectives on Mental Health Disorders
“The gene-derived proteins we examined show extensive connections to other proteins within the brain,” commented geneticist Hyejung Won from the University of North Carolina. “Alterations within these specific proteins could have extensive impacts, leading to a cascade of effects within the brain.”
In the landmark year of 2019, researchers internationally first associated 109 genes with psychiatric conditions, including autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, Tourette syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anorexia. These common genetic threads may clarify why these disorders not only frequently co-occur in individuals but also tend to run in families.
The research team delved into gene variants unique to each condition against those that span across all eight, infusing nearly 18,000 gene mutations into neuron precursor cells to observe gene expression alterations during brain maturation.
In this process, they unveiled 683 variants that had a regulatory effect on gene function, looking into their implications in neuron development using mouse models. These pleiotropic variants—having the ability to affect multiple disparate traits—showed extensive connectivity in protein interactions and were observed to be active in diverse brain cell types.
This uncovering of pleiotropy, often viewed as an obstacle due to its potential to cloud disorder classification, may now be a beacon of hope, as Won explained. “Understanding the genetic roots of pleiotropy could lead us to devise therapies that target these underlying shared factors, potentially providing a single treatment strategy for several psychiatric conditions.”
This research holds considerable significance, echoing the World Health Organization’s data that report about 1 in 8 people globally experience a psychiatric condition. With these new findings, there is potential to streamline treatment approaches, impacting close to a billion people across the globe..
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