Genetic Links to anxiety & depression (GLAD) study: Online recruitment into largest recontactable study of depression & anxiety, 2019, Davies et al

Open access, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796719301895

 

That seems excessively overdiagnosed. Hopefully this leads to better diagnostic tools that reduce this absurdly inflated number. Being able to reliably diagnose those two would go a long way to removing a lot of the noise in medicine.

The 80:20 female:male ratio is a bit on the suspicious side as to the reliability of diagnosis. If the standard tools used in practice are not reliable, very likely, it will only perpetuate those flaws. Recruitment pool was mainly from IAPT clinics and KCL, then online.

 

Oh I nearly participated in this but then didn't because it was too much effort.
Or maybe it was because I didn't meet inclusion criteria. Can't remember

 

Re the female to male ratio in participants - could be because males may be more reluctant to admit they have depression/anxiety by taking part in a study?

 

Oh they're still recruiting... I might try again, given I have more energy to work with these days than I did when I tried before.

 

Potential perk of taking part is that you can ask them to give you your genetic data if you wish... I imagine that'd be more accurate than 23andme

 

Is this what's called a GWAS?

 

The number of authors is astonishing - over 50 individuals plus a consortium of some kind, all from the UK apart from two - one from the Republic of Ireland, the other from Sweden.

The whole thing will be interpreted and puffed off in a way that saves the NHS money and screws patients, I'm sure of it.

If I had given the reliability of the data any thought at all I would have guessed completely the opposite. I would expect a commercial company with years of experience would know more about genetic testing than a group of academics with only theoretical knowledge and little or no practical experience. But maybe I'm just too cynical.

What is a GWAS?

 

Thanks, @Trish

 

The effort going into diagnosis of depression and anxiety can sometimes be shockingly lazy. And it's rarely overturned even when an actual explanation is found, instead turned into either the association or risk factor that BPS folks love to point at.

I once saw an ENT to check for explanations for dizziness and lightheadedness, mentioned my tinnitus and the doc said it's probably anxiety. Zero questions asked. No idea if that's the conclusion on my file but I would not be surprised.

On the anxiety personality spectrum, I range somewhere between a capybara and a highly sedated capybara. Yet it is probably in my files from multiple sources. Likely not as MDD or GAD but still, a lot of it is noise that should not be there and must factor in statistics in some way.

 

I was recently told that my bunged up ears were due to depression or psychological factors.

 

*facepalm*

 

MUS bedding in nicely?

 

With hindsight I've been suffering from them for over 45 years, so yes.

 

Are they providing participants with their complete whole-genome sequence data?

It will be interesting if they find anything with high sensitivity, but I doubt they will.