Current Psychiatry Reviews - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2014

With the decrease in sequencing cost and the rise of companies providing sequencing services, it is likely that personalized whole-genome sequencing will eventually become an instrument of common medical practice. We write this series of three reviews to help non-geneticist clinicians get ready for the major breakthroughs that are likely to occur in the coming years in the fast-moving field of personalized med Read More

With the decrease in sequencing costs, personalized genome sequencing will eventually become common in medical practice. We therefore write this series of three reviews to help non-geneticist clinicians to jump into the fastmoving field of personalized medicine. In the first article of this series, we reviewed the fundamental concepts in molecular genetics. In this second article, we cover the key concepts and methods in g Read More

The rapid decline of sequencing costs brings hope that personal genome sequencing will become a common feature of medical practice. This series of three reviews aim to help non-geneticist clinicians to jump into the fast-moving field of personalized genetic medicine. In the first two articles, we covered the fundamental concepts of molecular genetics and the methodologies used in genetic epidemiology. In this third Read More

Research into the genetic basis of schizophrenia is advancing rapidly. This review gives a broad overview of results from successive phases of studies in this field, linking these with recent findings and likely future research directions. Among recent findings, large-scale epidemiological studies based on Scandinavian population registers, have provided further evidence of substantial heritability and evidence that a wide r Read More

ADHD and Autism have been considered as two separate disorders and the classification systems make them mutually exclusive. However, there is a long-standing literature on overlapping phenotypes, and a more recent genetic literature on rare variants that have been found in both. This review summarises the clinical, familial and recent genetic overlap and discusses what this might mean for future diagnosis and treatment.

This narrative review aims to provide an overview of the impact of opioid dependence and the contribution of genetics to opioid dependence. Epidemiological data demonstrate that opioid dependence is a global trend with farreaching effects on the social, economic, and health care systems. A review of classical genetic studies of opioid use suggests significant heritability of drug use behavior, however the evidence f Read More

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is an imprinting neurodevelopmental disorder resulting from loss of function of paternal PWS critical genomic region on chromosome 15q11-q13. The clinical course in PWS is characterized by neonatal hypotonia with feeding difficulties and failure to thrive. This is followed by onset of hyperphagia leading to obesity. Patients with PWS have several neurobehavioral and psychiatric features including l Read More

There is considerable variation in the individualized response to psychotropic drug therapies, which include antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. It has been proposed that the wide interindividual variability in psychotropic drug-response may be attributable to genetic variants. Thus pharmacogenetics may help to accurately predict response to psychotropic treatment, and may be used as guidelines in Read More

Background: To date, research in the field of genetics in psychiatric illness has yielded inconclusive results. The focus has primarily been on the nuclear genome, with relatively little attention paid to the mitochondrial genome. A growing body of evidence supports the hypothesis that mitochondrial dysfunction may be important in the biology of psychiatric disorders; therefore, we reviewed the literature on mitochondri Read More