Posted on 07/31/2017 10:26:53 PM PDT by nickcarraway
At-home DNA-testing company 23andMe is recruiting 25,000 people for a study to determine how genes influence brain functions in people diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorders.
The Google-backed company's latest project is a collaboration with the Milken Institute, a medical research nonprofit, and Lundbeck, a drug developer, to study the genetics -- and also symptoms, behavior and other environmental factors --- associated with bipolar and major depressive disorders.
In interviews with CNBC, the company describes its goal as finding out how genes influence brain processes, like attention and visual perception, for those with these conditions.
23andMe is currently recruiting 15,000 people with major depressive disorder and 10,000 people with bipolar disorder to participate in the study. Those who apply must have received a diagnosis from a physician, currently have a prescribed medication and live in the United States. The company is soliciting participants both from its own database of customers who have consented to participate in research, and from other sources such as online forums where people discuss their symptoms.
The study will last for 9 months, and involves both monthly assessments and surveys. 23andMe research manager Anna Faaborg describes it as the "most intensive yet."
23andMe caused a big splash in 2016 when its study of more than 450,000 customers found a number of genetic clues linked to depression. For a long time, it wasn't clear that it had a genetic component, said the company's vice president of business development Emily Drabant Conley.
But 23andMe proved otherwise: "It turned out that we just needed a really big data-set to see them," she said.
23andMe can more easily recruit participants for its studies than researchers at academic institutions as it can email information out to its huge database of consumers, and it offers its surveys via a smartphone. Traditional research often requires participants to travel to research sites.
This new research is intended to build on 23andMe's findings about the genetic links to depression by looking at other variables, including environmental ones.
23andMe's Drabant Conley said the results might ultimately influence how pharmaceutical companies develop drugs to treat these conditions. "It might change the way that symptoms are treated," she said.
One side of me says ... no
I have OCD, wonder if they could use me? :-)
My DNA test might freak them out though...maybe if I studied really hard for it.....
Psychiatrist: You have multiple personality disorder. That’ll be $100.
Patient: Here’s $20. That covers my share.
I love Dr jokes.
Here’s an oldie but goody.
Doctor examines a mans wife and talks to him after.
Dr: Your wife has acute angina.
Husband: Yeah, it is cute ain’t it.
I wonder if they can figure out that Bruce Jenner is still a man? You know, XY and all that....can they check chromosomes?
Talk about some crazy science!!
Liberals only need apply?
[ The Google-backed company’s latest project ]
Well, how bow dah.
Drug companies want even more billions.
Interesting.
Google is slime.
Wondered that sort of thing myself. If they identify someone as an M or an F do they get howls from the leftists unless they add “Your mileage may vary”?
seems to me to be an interesting way to get an all volunteer genetic database. Wonder when the collection will become mandatory.
bookmark
[Wonder when the collection will become mandatory]
I’m guessing right after the Rapture.
Wait, I’ve been told again I don’t believe in that.....
j/k
I cannot believe people are falling for this thing. Then again, I can’t believe people voted for Obama. Not once, bad enough but to do it AGAIN. SMH
The same thing crossed my mind.
Mandatory? Never...partly because of cost ($150 or more).
I would suggest that if more people did the test and the database were open to lab folks to invite particular groups...you might have more designer drugs which work more effectively.
Overseas, 23andMe isn’t getting hyped and probably a decade away from helping on ancestor type searches.
Pick a Democrat, any Democrat, and you’ve got a good candidate to study.
Then file their brains away under A. B. Normal.
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