Serotonin Transporter Gene (5-HTT) Variation Impacts on Development of Anxiety and Depression: A Longitudinal Study
Effects of 5-HTT gene variation on development of anxiety symptom severity.
The data were extracted from two waves of a longitudinal study. The two waves had 10 years apart.
Due to the skewed nature of the outcomes (symptom scores of anxiety and depression), generalized linear models were applied in this study. In addition, parameters were estimated based on GEE, and least-squared mean results were given to explain the 5-HTT gene effects on the developmental course of anxiety and depression, as well as the interactive effects between 5-HTT gene and early environmental factor (childhood abuse).
Effects of 5-HTT gene variation on development of depressive symptom severity.
Results showed that LaLa allele of 5-HTT gene had protective effects on developing anxiety symptoms in both adolescence and early adulthood. With a childhood physical abuse history, the protective effects of LaLa allele became stronger than other situations of childhood abuse. Similar to the effects on anxiety symptoms, LaLa allele was also found to have protective effects on developing depressive symptoms in adolescence and early adulthood. The difference is that the protective effects may not be interactive with childhood abuse.
Socio-economic Predictors of Treatment Service Utilization for Mental Health and Substance Related Problems among 84,342 Youth and Young Adults (Ages 12 - 25) →
Originally, it was a racial disparity study.
The bubble plot shows that socio-economic status distributes disproportionally among races.
So do health status and health service use for mental health and alcohol/drug use problems.
Results of logistic regression with multinomial outcome (the reference level is no treatment, the 1st level is treatment for MDE, and the 2nd level is treatment for alcohol/drug use problems. The analysis was carried among a subpopulation with past-year alcohol/drug abuse or dependence.
The odds of being treated for alcohol/drug use problems is lower among those with family income at $20,000 - $39,999, which is 0.72 times of the odds among those with family income ranged from $40,000 to $74,999, even when other factors are held constant.
Insurance factor is related to treatment received after adjusting for confounding factors. The odds of being treated for MDE among those without any insurance coverage is 0.69 times of the odds among those with other insurance coverage than Medicaid and Medicare.
Persistence of Chronic Major Depression: a National Prospective Study →
Risk factors that are related to persistence of chronic major depressive disorder.
The focus of the original paper is to find important risk factors from multiple perspectives related to the persistent course of chronic major depression, including socio-demographic dimension, economic dimension, insurance, family and developmental risks, previous physical, mental and emotional conditions, treatment-seeking patterns, as well as the nature of chronic MDD conditions.
However, a second look of the results, it can be found that insurance status played a major role compared to other socio-economic factors. Specially, public insurance beneficiaries are more likely to have a persistent course of chronic MDD, compared to private insurance beneficiaries. In addition, in terms of treatment-seeking patterns, patients who had persistent type of chronic MDD increased odds of seeking treatments. Even though, these patients still persistently developed depressive disorder. So, it essentially comes a question. Exactly, what type of treatment can be effective to these patients with persistent chronic MDD?
The Latent Structure and Predictors of Non-Medical Prescription Drug Use and Use Disorders, n=43,093
Dataset: the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) with a sample size of 43,093.
Procedure: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were to examine the latent structure of non-medical prescription drug use and prescription drug use disorders on the full sample. The non-medical prescription drugs are sedatives, opiates, tranquilizers, and stimulants. One-factor model was captured by EFA and confirmed by CFA, which indicates a liability shared among these drug use and use disorders.
Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) analysis was used to examine whether the effect of sociodemographic and psychiatric covariates occurred through the latent factor, directly on each drug class or both. It has been found that younger age, being White, having more intense pain or psychiatric conditions increased the risk of non-medical prescription drug use through the latent factor. The same covariates, except for anxiety disorders also significantly increased the risk of prescription drug use disorders through the latent factor. In addition, young age directly increased the risk of sedative use above and beyond the latent factor.
Conclusion: Treatment, prevention and policy approaches associated with these identified risk factors working on these drug use problems as a group maybe more effective than those focused on individual classes of drugs.