Blog Category: Genetics

Forget Everything You Know About Diets and Healthy Eating

Science now has an explanation for why many of us try out the latest diet only to find that it is not working. A study published in the journal Cell this week, has demonstrated that different people’s bodies respond to …

Do Men and Women Experience Depression Differently?

Kenneth Kendler, M.D., a professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Human and Molecular Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, and colleagues studied 1,057 adult opposite-sex dizygotic twin pairs for the incidence of major depression within a given …

The MAOA Gene Predicts Happiness in Women

Research published in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry demonstrates the association between happiness and monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) genotype. In women, low expression of MAOA was related significantly to greater happiness. In contrast, no such association was found in …

Personalized Medicine in Psychiatry

How close are we to implementing the idea of personalized medicine in psychiatry? Next year the International Congress on Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) is holding a thematic meeting in April 2013 entitled “Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine in Psychiatry.” An ‘All …

New genetic data for the most common subtype of migraine

Researchers studied genetic data of more than 11 000 people and found altogether six genes that predispose to migraine without aura. Four of these genes are new and two of them confirm previous findings. New study published in Nature Genetics. …

Gene Therapy Shows Promise in Treating Parkinson’s in Humans

A study aimed at the treatment of patients with medically refractory Parkinson’s disease (PD), showed promising phase 2 results for a therapeutic approach to determine the safety and efficacy of AAV-GAD gene transfer into the subthalamic nucleus (STN) region of …