Blood test could help detect suicide risk

A group of American scientists said on August 21 that they had discovered a series of biological indicators in the blood that could help determine each person's risk of suicide in the future.

The results of this study have now been published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry (MPJ) on the same day. According to researchers at Indiana University (USA), the levels of biological markers can increase significantly in the blood of both bipolar patients with suicidal thoughts and those who have committed suicide.

Illustration photo. (Source: foodmatters.tv)

The results provide the first "substantial evidence" that a blood test could help early warn someone at high risk of impulsive suicide.

Over a three-year period, Niculescu and his colleagues followed a large group of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder. They collected interviews and took blood samples every three to six months.

The researchers then analyzed blood samples from a subset of participants, revealing a significant shift from no suicidal thoughts to strong suicidal ideation in the patients.

They identified differences in gene expression between "low" and "high" states of suicidal ideation and found that markers called SAT1 and a range of others provided the strongest biological "signals" associated with suicidal ideation in patients.

Next, to verify the findings, they analyzed blood samples from suicide victims and found that several of the same leading markers were significantly elevated.

Finally, the team analyzed the blood test results of two additional groups of patients and found that high blood biomarker levels also correlated with future suicide-related hospitalizations, as well as hospitalizations that occurred before and after the blood test.

This suggests that biomarkers not only reflect current high-risk status but also are marker characteristics associated with long-term suicide risk.

Psychiatrist Niculescu said more than one million people worldwide die by suicide each year but said it was a preventable tragedy.

He believes that people who are about to commit suicide will not disclose it when asked, and then they will die from suicide without us being able to do anything. Therefore, we need better ways of identifying them so that we can intervene and prevent tragedies.

The new research results promise to be the key to unlocking ways to detect and prevent the risk of suicide in people, especially young people in the modern world./.

According to (Vietnam+) - VT