Clinicians have long sought a way to identify which patients are at greatest risk for potentially disastrous consequences resulting from suicidal thoughts or postpartum depression. But finding an objective measure to assess psychiatric states, without asking a patient directly if they’re suicidal, has proven challenging. Now, two new studies are providing hope that simple blood tests could hold the answer as to which patients could most benefit from early intervention—prior to exhibiting outward symptoms. The two studies highlight the tremendous ongoing work to identify reliable biomarkers of psychiatric conditions. RNA Test Can Predict Suicide Risk The combination of blood-based RNA biomarkers in a simple questionnaire app can predict which psychiatric patients are at the greatest risk of suicide, according to a study published online Aug. 18 in Molecular Psychiatry. The researchers had previously shown in a proof-of-principle study that blood-based gene expression biomarkers could predict future hospitalizations due to suicide in male bipolar disorder patients. The present study broadens validation of an improved set of markers across major psychiatric disorders (bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia) and combines the quantitative markers with an app-based questionnaire to achieve greater than 90 percent accuracy in identifying which patients are […]