– A pioneering study opens roads for tailor-made antidepressants

In spite that the causes of depression have not still been fully identified, scientists acknowledge that genetic and environmental factors play a common role in the onset of this disorder.

One of the environmental risk factors more often related to depression is exposure to threatening life events. On the other side, from a genetic point of view, the serotonin transporter gene, with a crucial role in communication between neurons, could predispose to depression.

An international group of scientists, headed by professors Jorge Cervilla Ballesteros and Blanca Gutiérrez Martínez, from the department of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Psychiatry of the University of Granada [http://www.ugr.es], has recently published in the prestigious journal Molecular Psychiatry the pioneering study PREDICT-gene, confirming the relation between allele s in the serotonin transporter gene and exposure to threatening life events in the onset of depression.

The study proves, for a population sample accounting for gender, age and family history of psychiatric disorders, that 24% of the Spanish population, comprising people with the s/s genotype, need minimal exposure to threatening life events, unlike individuals with s/l or l/l genotypes, thus confirming the relation between genetic and environmental factors in this mental disorder.

Tailor-made antidepressants

The most important consequence of research on interaction between genetic and environmental factors is that, in a foreseeable future, scientists will be able to produce measures to predict response to antidepressants taking into account each individual’s genotype, i. e. they will be able to design tailor-made drugs according to each person’s genetic configuration and their exposure to environmental factors.

The research group headed by professor Cervilla Ballesteros and Gutiérrez Martínez is currently working at the University of Granada [http://www.ugr.es] to open roads for psycho-pharmaco-genetics, a field that will allow for individual treatments, tailor-made drugs, for each patient with depression, a disorder affecting one in every five Spaniards visiting the doctor’s.

This study is framed in the international project PREDICT and is funded by the European Union and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. One of its most important novelties is that it has been carried out through a very representative sample: a total of 737 people agreed to participate in the genetic tests, with ages ranging from 18 to 75, patients of nine primary care centres in the South of Spain. That is why this is the first representative population-based replication of earlier research, as until now research had been done into restricted population samples, comprising only women, adolescents, twins or people with affective disorders.

Descargar

– Taking a supplement of glycine, a food additive, helps to prevent degenerative diseases such as arthrosis or osteoporosis

Glycine is a non-essential amino acid used by the organism to synthesise proteins and is present in foods such as fish, meat or dairy products.

The study, carried out at the Cellular Metabolism Institute in Tenerife and at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the University of Granada by Doctor Patricia de Paz Lugo and supervised by Doctors Enrique Meléndez Hevia, David Meléndez Morales and José Antonio Lupiáñez Cara, established that the direct intake of this substance as a food additive helps to prevent arthrosis and other degenerative diseases, in addition to other diseases related to a weakness in the mechanical structure of the organism, including the difficulty of repairing physical injuries.

The work of De Paz Lugo was developed at the Cellular Metabolism Institute (CMI) in Tenerife, where researchers studied the effect of the glycine supplement on the diet of a group of 600 volunteers affected by different diseases related to the mechanical structure of the organism such as arthrosis, physical injuries or osteoporosis. The patients analysed were aged 4-85, and the average age was 45.

In all cases, there was a notable improvement in the symptomology. “Thefore –according to De Paz Lugo- we concluded that many degenerative diseases such as arthrosis can be treated as deficiency diseases due to the lack of glycine, since supplementing a diet with this amino acid leads to a notable improvement in symptomology without the need to take painkillers”.

A very common disease

Arthrosis is the most common osteoarticulary problem in our society: more than 50% of the population suffer from it after the age of 65, and 80% of people over 75. It consists of a degeneration of the articulary cartilage which disappears until it leaves the subchondral bone exposed. Arthrosis has no cure at present and the most widely used treatments are pain-killers and NSAID (non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs), which only relieve pain but do not repair the damage in the cartilage or influence the development of the disease.

The work carried out by the scientist from the CMI shows that collagen has a unique structure with a right-handed triple superhelix in which the glycine represents a third of its residues. Mathematical analysis of the metabolic route of the synthesis of the glycine, developed by the research group to which Patricia de Paz belongs, demonstrated that this amino acid should be considered an essential amino acid.

The doctoral thesis carried out at the CMI and the UGR [http://www.ugr.es] has shown that the capacity of the metabolism to synthesise glycine is very limited. The conclusion of this study is that glycine, administered in daily doses of 10 grams divided into two doses of 5 grams ?one in the morning and one at night? leads to a general improvement in these problems over a period of time which, in most cases, is between two weeks and four months.

Descargar