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Mental health is now more openly discussed today than before. Because of this, researchers and experts continue their efforts to develop methods for both diagnosis and treatment of different mental health issues and disorders, with anxiety and depression as the most common ones.

Although there is currently no officially accepted medical test that will lead to the diagnosis of mental health disorders, there are blood tests that will indicate the presence of physiological conditions like thyroid disease or electrolyte imbalance, which can cause mental health disorder symptoms.

Potential breakthrough

Interestingly, researchers in the United States and Canada may be at the height of a breakthrough as they reported to have developed a potential blood-based test for early identification of depression risk in teenagers. At the Neuroscience 2023 conference, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, researchers talked about their findings in their efforts to identify reliable molecular indicators for the risk of depression. They collected blood samples from adolescents and used a minimally invasive method to analyze the microRNA profiles.

Comparing the results of the blood samples of participants composed of children and adolescents diagnosed with clinical depression and those without, they found differences in microRNAs that are potential markers for the disorder. They also found a potential link between the increase in mRNA indicators and the severity of major depressive disorder, or MDD.

The team said their findings could lead the way not only to the early diagnosis of depression but also to the identification of the severity of the MDD symptoms in a patient. The early diagnosis could also lead to better, faster and more effective interventions and treatment.