LETTER
Genetic Variants Involved in Bipolar Disorder, a Rough Road Ahead
Germano Orrù1, 2, *, Mauro Giovanni Carta3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 14
First Page: 37
Last Page: 45
Publisher ID: CPEMH-14-37
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901814010037
Article History:
Received Date: 28/11/2017Revision Received Date: 07/01/2018
Acceptance Date: 15/01/2018
Electronic publication date: 28/02/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Bipolar Disorder (BD), along with depression and schizophrenia, is one of the most serious mental illnesses, and one of the top 20 causes of severe impairment in everyday life. Recent molecular studies, using both traditional approaches and new procedures such as Whole-Genome Sequencing (WGS), have suggested that genetic factors could significantly contribute to the development of BD, with heritability estimates of up to 85%. However, it is assumed that BD is a multigenic and multifactorial illness with environmental factors that strongly contribute to disease development/progression, which means that progress in genetic knowledge of BD might be difficult to interpret in clinical practice.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to provide a synthetic description of the main SNPs variants identified/confirmed by recent extensive WGS analysis as well as by reconstruction in an in vitro mechanism or by amygdala activation protocol in vivo.
Method:
Bibliographic data, genomic and protein Data Banks were consulted so as to carry out a cross genomic study for mutations, SNPs and chromosomal alterations described in these studies in BD patients.
Results:
Fifty-five different mutations have been described in 30 research papers by different genetic analyses including recent WGS analysis. Many of these studies have led to the discovery of the most probable susceptibility genes for BD, including ANK3, CACNA1C, NCAN, ODZ4, SYNE1, and TRANK1. Exploration has started the role of several of these mutations in BD pathophysiology using in vitro and animal models.
Conclusion:
Although new genomic research technology in BD opens up new possibilities, the current results for common variants are still controversial because of four broad conditions: analytical validity, clinical validity, clinical utility and a reasonable cost for genetic analysis are not yet accessible.