A team from Northwestern University said a blood test could help diagnose depression. It turns out that in the blood of people suffering from this disease there are special chemicals. This means that in the future, the determination of depression will become possible not only through routine testing.
In their work, the researchers used blood samples from 28 teenagers, among whom 14 were healthy, and 14 had symptoms of premature development of depression. As it turned out, there were special biomarkers in the blood of the latter.
This experiment is based on a previous study involving animals, which allowed us to identify 26 markers in the blood, correlated with genetic characteristics and stress associated with brain damage.
In the case of early development of depression, even at a young age, further forecasts are extremely negative. According to statistics, depression affects up to 25% of young people. In addition, depression is associated with the development of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases in the future, in which the test can theoretically also help.
The next step of the experts will be to test the effectiveness of this technique on a larger group of people suffering from depression.