Posted by Tomatheus on November 27, 2005, at 0:02:19
In reply to where to get Serotonin Transporter gene testing?, posted by law663 on November 26, 2005, at 18:03:31
> anyone know if this testing is available commerically?
law663,
This is an excellent question.
I have made modest (but admittedly, not completely thorough) attempts in recent months to try to find out if commercial testing is available with respect to the genes that have shown statistically significant correlations with psychiatric illnesses. To my knowledge, no such tests are available (of course, if somebody else on this board knows otherwise, *please* correct me). A user named scatterbrained posted a message here a few weeks ago about a company called Signature Genetics, which apparently provides their member physicians with genetic testing results so they can use these results to help make treatment decisions. I visited their Web site (http://www.signaturegenetics.com/), and inquired via e-mail whether they test for the genes that have shown associations with psychiatric illnesses. I never heard back from them.
In my opinion, implementing a system of genetic testing into psychiatric practice could only improve the quality of services offered by psychiatrists. I do, however, think that such testing should be voluntary, as some patients might be opposed to having their genes scanned. But for patients who are willing to receive genetic testing, I think that the test results could potentially reduce a lot of the frustration and utter despair that patients experience from going through years (and sometimes even decades) of unsuccessful drug trials. Molecular genetics researchers have made significant progress in finding associations between genetic variants and psychiatric illnesses. They clearly still have a long way to go before even come close to identifying all of the genes that contribute to mental illnesses. It is still relatively unclear how common each of the genes are, the extent to which each gene contributes to a given illness (or illnesses), and whether most psychiatric patients have just one "abnormal" psychiatric gene or multiple "abnormal" genes. But despite the fact that our knowledge of psychiatric genetics is still limited, I think that the knowledge that we do have could still be extremely helpful by at least eliminating *some* of the guesswork involved in psychiatry.
As you can probably tell from the preceding paragraph, the serotonin transporter gene is just one of many genes that have been implicated in depression. Some of the most common psychiatric illnesses (including but probably not limited to major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, panic disorder, and OCD) have demonstrated statistically significant correlations with multiple genes. Likewise, some of the genes that have been associated with one disorder have also been associated with other disorders. Although it is possible that the results of some of these genetic association studies actually represent "false positive" correlations -- some of the findings have been replicated more frequently than others -- I think that the data from these studies are strongly suggestive of the biological heterogeneity of psychiatric illnesses. Even if psychiatrists only order scans of the genes that are currently believed to be associated with mental illness, they will at least be able to understand *something* about the underlying etiologies of their patients' illnesses if the results turn up positive for one or more abnormal genetic variant. This, in turn, would allow psychiatrists to tailor treatments to the biochemical abnormalities associated with their patients' genetic variants, rather than relying exclusively on the subjective criteria of the DSM.
Tomatheus
poster:Tomatheus
thread:582481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051126/msgs/582608.html