14 DAY TRIAL // At some point in the future, it might be possible to determine how likely a person is to commit suicide with the help of a simple blood test, scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine argue.
These researchers claim to have pinned down several RNA biomarkers that are present in an individual's blood and that could one day make it possible for specialists to figure out what people have a higher risk of committing suicide.
Writing in today's issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, the scientists explain that said biomarkers are present at noteworthy levels in the blood of bipolar disorder patients experiencing thoughts of suicide.
Besides, they can be found in the blood of individuals who had ended their own lives.
According to EurekAlert, the researchers reached the conclusion that a blood test could one day serve as an indicator of how likely a person is to commit suicide after spending three years looking into the mental health and the blood makeup of several male volunteers.
Some of the volunteers had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder prior to their enlisting for this study.
Others merely reported a major shift in their mood, and said that they had suddenly switched from having no suicidal thoughts whatsoever to experiencing powerful suicidal ideation.
The common denominator for the bipolar disorder patients thinking about suicide and the other volunteers who admitted to considering ending their own lives turned out to be an increase of certain markers in their blood levels.
Autopsies carried out on people who committed suicide also showed that they had high levels of these markers.
“These seem to be good markers for suicidal behavior in males who have bipolar mood disorders or males in the general population who commit impulsive violent suicide,” researcher Alexander B. Niculescu argued.
Since suicide is a fairly complex phenomenon, the researchers wish to carry out further investigations and see whether or not their findings hold true in the case of women.
What's more, they wish to take several other socio-demographic variables (eg. age, education, income) into consideration.
Commenting on the importance of this research, Alexander B. Niculescu stated as follows:
“Suicide is a big problem in psychiatry. It's a big problem in the civilian realm, it's a big problem in the military realm and there are no objective markers.”
“There are people who will not reveal they are having suicidal thoughts when you ask them, who then commit it and there's nothing you can do about it. We need better ways to identify, intervene and prevent these tragic cases,” he further stressed.