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Indiana University School of Medicine researchers develop blood test for anxiety

Discussion in 'Other health news and research' started by Mij, Mar 9, 2023.

  1. Mij

    Mij Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    New test is the latest in a series of blood tests for mental health disorders

    INDIANAPOLIS—Researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine have successfully developed a blood test for anxiety. The test examines biomarkers that can help them objectively determine someone’s risk for developing anxiety, the severity of their current anxiety and which therapies would likely treat their anxiety the best.


    https://medicine.iu.edu/news/2023/03/blood-test-for-anxiety
     
    Mij, Mar 9, 2023
    #1
    RedFox and Peter Trewhitt like this.
  2. John Mac

    John Mac Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    John Mac, Mar 9, 2023
    #2
    Trish and Peter Trewhitt like this.
  3. RedFox

    RedFox Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    This will severely harm pwME if there are false positives. If it confirms the presence of a mental condition secondary to or unrelated to ME, there's a high risk clinicians will believe it's the cause.
     
    RedFox, Mar 9, 2023
    #3
    Peter Trewhitt, mango, Trish and 1 other person like this.
  4. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    In addition to the problem of boasting about having developed tests that don't exist, making the claim here not especially credible, the paper opens up saying that because of the lack of test, anxiety is underdiagnosed. Not a strong start. Up is down. Moist is dry.

    I think they may have made this largely useless with trying to tie this in to "anxiety", which is defined in a way that simply doesn't make sense with trying to match with molecules:
    Using this definition of anxiety, the real definition, is very different then how it's normally used, where they commonly ask weird questions and add on some symptoms to it, usually autonomic ones.

    This kind of work could be useful if they just dropped the old nonsense and tried to work with the lived reality of the patients, rather than trying to find the precise molecular expression of some form of thought or another to make sense of old myths and ideological models.

    It's possible that this is something useful, but it doesn't have anything to do with the wishy-washy BPS stuff about thoughts and beliefs, even less so with the definition of anxiety they used. This almost looks like Creationist science, trying to find a bridge between beliefs and nature.
     
    rvallee, Mar 9, 2023
    #4
    bobbler, alktipping and Peter Trewhitt like this.
  5. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    This is the paper referred to in the article.

    Towards precision medicine for anxiety disorders: objective assessment, risk prediction, pharmacogenomics, and repurposed drugs, 2023, Roseberry et al.

    Abstract
    (paragraph breaks added)

    Anxiety disorders are increasingly prevalent, affect people’s ability to do things, and decrease quality of life. Due to lack of objective tests, they are underdiagnosed and sub-optimally treated, resulting in adverse life events and/or addictions.

    We endeavored to discover blood biomarkers for anxiety, using a four-step approach.

    First, we used a longitudinal within-subject design in individuals with psychiatric disorders to discover blood gene expression changes between self-reported low anxiety and high anxiety states.

    Second, we prioritized the list of candidate biomarkers with a Convergent Functional Genomics approach using other evidence in the field.

    Third, we validated our top biomarkers from discovery and prioritization in an independent cohort of psychiatric subjects with clinically severe anxiety.

    Fourth, we tested these candidate biomarkers for clinical utility, i.e. ability to predict anxiety severity state, and future clinical worsening (hospitalizations with anxiety as a contributory cause), in another independent cohort of psychiatric subjects. We showed increased accuracy of individual biomarkers with a personalized approach, by gender and diagnosis, particularly in women.

    The biomarkers with the best overall evidence were GAD1, NTRK3, ADRA2A, FZD10, GRK4, and SLC6A4.

    Finally, we identified which of our biomarkers are targets of existing drugs (such as a valproate, omega-3 fatty acids, fluoxetine, lithium, sertraline, benzodiazepines, and ketamine), and thus can be used to match patients to medications and measure response to treatment. We also used our biomarker gene expression signature to identify drugs that could be repurposed for treating anxiety, such as estradiol, pirenperone, loperamide, and disopyramide.

    Given the detrimental impact of untreated anxiety, the current lack of objective measures to guide treatment, and the addiction potential of existing benzodiazepines-based anxiety medications, there is a urgent need for more precise and personalized approaches like the one we developed.
    _______________
    End of quote

    I don't think we should just dismiss this out of hand. They are talking about a method to help identify which drugs are best for each individual with severe anxiety disorders. That could be very useful.

    It looks like this was intended to help assess severity levels and drug suitablity, not to diagnose whether the patients had anxiety disorder.
    What is not clear from the abstract is whether they did any testing to see whether there might be false positives among people without anxiety disorders.
     
    Trish, Mar 9, 2023
    #5
    Sarah94, shak8, Mij and 3 others like this.

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