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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 16 2016, @02:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the wishing-them-success dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956 from a VAI press release:

A collaborative study from research teams in Sweden, the US and Australia published in Translational Psychiatry shows that suicidal patients have a reduced activity of an enzyme that regulates inflammation and its byproducts.

It is known that people who have attempted suicide have ongoing inflammation in their blood and spinal fluid. Now, a collaborative study from research teams in Sweden, the US and Australia published in Translational Psychiatry shows that suicidal patients have a reduced activity of an enzyme that regulates inflammation and its byproducts.

[...] Currently, there are no biomarkers for psychiatric illness, namely biological factors that can be measured and provide information about the patient's psychiatric health. If a simple blood test can identify individuals at risk of taking their lives, that would be a huge step forward, said [Professor Sophie] Erhardt, a Professor at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institutet, who led the work along with [Professor Lena] Brundin.

The researchers analyzed certain metabolites, byproducts formed during infection and inflammation, in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid [CSF] from patients who tried to take their own lives. Previously it has been shown that such patients have ongoing inflammation in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid. This new work has succeeded in showing that patients who have attempted suicide have reduced activity of an enzyme called ACMSD, which regulates inflammation and its byproducts.

[Continues...]

[...] The substance that the enzyme ACMSD produces, picolinic acid, is greatly reduced in both plasma and in the spinal fluid of suicidal patients. Another product, called quinolinic acid, is increased. Quinolinic acid is inflammatory and binds to and activates glutamate receptors in the brain. Normally, ACMSD produces picolinic acid at the expense of quinolinic acid, thus maintaining an important balance.

[...] Several of the researchers have indicated that they have business interests, which are recognized in the article.

Having found these results in suicidal patients, the researchers are now trying to find out if this imbalance is also present in those with severe depression. They are also seeking to develop drugs that might activate the ACMSD enzyme and restore the balance between quinolinic and picolinic acids.

The full article is available: "An enzyme in the kynurenine pathway That governs vulnerability to suicidal behavior by regulating excitotoxicity and neuroinflammation" Translational Psychiatry, published online August 2, 2016, doi: 10.1038 / TP.2016.133.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:33PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:33PM (#388777)

    And the teenage offspring of people leading decent lives, who have a model for success but no blueprint for achieving it and haven't decided they like the looks of that model anyway, commit suicide regardless. Mostly along the lines of whether they feel socially in line with the rest of society or ostracized and isolated.

    Money is not the real underlying factor. The real underlying factor is the sense that what you are doing with your life matters. The value of one's existence can be measured against the value society places upon you, which is typically the default. People can, and often do, learn to measure the value of their existence against something more under their own control, such as academic accomplishment, the health and prosperity of one's family, financial success, sense of personal dominance, or feeling of personal contribution to society regardless of the value placed upon that contribution. But the important part is that you measure your value in a way that you have value. Otherwise, why exist?

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  • (Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:44PM

    by Post-Nihilist (5672) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:44PM (#388785)

    Otherwise, why exist ?

    After many existential crisis, I concluded that we exist as a means for the Universe to fight against entropy !

    --
    Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:53PM

      by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:53PM (#388787)

      ...so do you measure your value by your destructive impact on the order of the universe? I'm afraid your personal contribution to that is quite low.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:01AM

        by Post-Nihilist (5672) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:01AM (#388929)

        destructive impact on the order of the universe?

        I fight against entropy not for it. My individual impact is negligible but the cumulative impact of life and moreso, existence, on the fight against the destructive impact of energy on the order of the universe is surely not !

        --
        Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
        • (Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:20AM

          by Post-Nihilist (5672) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:20AM (#388935)

          There is a really good series (only one episode on the net but many at the national archive of Québec) of lectures on cosmology [youtube.com] by Hubert Reeves [wikipedia.org] but you would have to speak french to really appreciate them for the gems they are

          --
          Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @07:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @07:08PM (#388798)

      After many existential crisis, I concluded that we exist as a means for the Universe to fight against entropy !

      You have that backwards. Life exists to increase entropy, faster. And it takes intelligent life to speed up nuclear half-life, which is really something for entropy ;)

      Now, if you just look at a microscopic scape, yes, you see "fight against entropy", but you have to look at the big picture instead.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:06AM (#388905)

    Right, so many of them special snowflakes vs people so genuinely desperate they go off themselves. FUCK YOU and your thin-skinned fucktards. "INSIGHTFUL" my ass.

    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:27PM

      by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:27PM (#389148)

      My argument also applies to suicide bombers and IS. They prey on young people's disaffection and promise them a new way to value their own life: according to a very simple, very achievable perversion of their parents' religion. And it's been a problem to some extent for every single generation of 20-somethings in America for at least the last 60 years. You can get on a high horse and call it some kind of generational failing that obviously didn't affect you in your youth, but it is a real problem that only gets worse the larger the world population gets. Because the root cause is that society already works and doesn't need any one person in the next generation to do any particular job, and most people aren't ambitious enough to carve out their own niche.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:16AM

    by sjames (2882) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:16AM (#389004) Journal

    Not a small factor is the tight constraints without a net. Work hard in the first grade or you won't get into a good college and you'll end up being a gum-scraper for minimum wage! Now, have fun today!

    And what are they looking forward to? Crushing debt from school, no decent jobs and declining wages.

    They can't even ask their parents how they got to success since their path is no longer passable.