Researchers identify a ‘gene module’ involved in both depression and cardiovascular disease

Apr 25 2024Frontiers Depression and cardiovascular disease are serious concerns for public health. Approximately 280 million people worldwide have depression, while 620 million people have CVD. It has been known since the 1990s that the two diseases are somehow related. For example, people with depression run a greater risk of CVD, while effective early treatment for depression cuts the risk of subsequently developing CVD by half. Conversely, people with CVD tend to have depression as well.

“We looked at gene expression profile in the blood of people with depression and CVD and found 256 genes in a single gene module whose expression at levels higher or lower than average puts people at greater risk of both diseases,” said first author Dr Binisha H Mishra, a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland.

Finland has the highest estimated incidence of mental disorders in the EU, and is the ninth-highest ranking country in the world for the prevalence of depression. In contrast, the country has a relatively low prevalence of CVD, ranking in the bottom 20% worldwide for this class of diseases. They used advanced statistics to identify 22 distinct gene modules, of which just one was associated with both a high score for depressive symptoms and a low score for cardiovascular health.

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