IN BRIEF
Men and women have
opposite genetic changes in depression
en and women with major depressive disorder have opposite changes in the same genes, according to a new study by researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the University of Pittsburgh. Published in Biological Psychiatry, the findings reveal significant biological differences, and suggest that men and women may need different types of treatment for depression. It’s the first time these opposing molecular changes in men and women have been identified. “These findings confirm the absolute necessity of doing parallel studies in men and women and of reassessing what we’ve
M
WOMEN ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO BE DIAGNOSED WITH DEPRESSION, AND TEND TO REPORT GREATER ILLNESS SEVERITY, MORE SYMPTOMS AND DIFFERENT TYPES OF SYMPTOMS THAN MEN taken for granted – depression is not just depression,” says Dr. Etienne Sibille, senior author of the study and Chair of the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH. There are obvious differences in depression between men and women – women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, and tend to report greater illness severity,
more symptoms and different types of symptoms than men. Yet, says lead author Dr. Marianne Seney, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, “While researchers have been examining the brains of depressed subjects for decades, many of these studies included only men.” As one example of how the illness is different, a less
common form of depression that involves weight gain and sleep disturbances, called hypersomnia, is three times more likely in women than in men. Another example is among people with depression who experience a co-occurring mental illness. In women, depression typically occurs alongside anxiety disorders, while men are more likely to report co-occurring substance use problems. In the new study, the researchers analyzed genes in the postmortem brain tissue of 26 men and 24 women with major depressive disorder, and in a comparison group of men and women without depression. Specifically, the team investigated gene expression levels, which indicate how Continued on page 7
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