9 ms·

Researchers develop blood test for anxiety

91 points by FollowingTheDao 4y ago

lapcat 4y ago
The test is simple: if you fear getting a blood test, then you have anxiety.
- Temporary_31337 4y ago
  IMO if you're getting a blood test for anxiety, that also implies one is anxious.
  - efitz 4y ago
    I’m not trying to be flippant, but why do we need a blood test for this when we have a test already, eg “Do you have anxiety? Do you have any of these symptoms?”
    - user8501 4y ago
      Seriously. This could be replaced with a one question questionnaire. Are you anxious?
    - Jiocus 4y ago
      Not everyone can identify anxiety symptoms in themselves, especially if they have been experiencing them for so long it's become 'normal'. There's also those that won't report what they are actually feeling, even when asked explicitly, for a range of reasons.
      - LoganDark 4y ago
        This. I've always been aware of every sign of executive dysfunction but never reported it because I thought it was normal. I was 100% aware of it and depressed over it but I thought that it was something that normal people are supposed to be able to just get over but I felt like I just didn't have the willpower and it was my fault. I'm so lucky I talked about "not being able to do the things that I want to do" and someone in the thread noticed and brought up ADHD. I'm on ADHD meds now and it fixes nearly every issue.
boh 4y ago
I'm glad they figured it out since it was impossible to tell any other way.
- Zealotux 4y ago
  >The test examines biomarkers that can help them objectively determine someone's risk for developing anxiety, the severity of their current anxiety and which therapies would likely treat their anxiety the best. It actually sounds more interesting than the headline suggests.
  - loldk 4y ago
    [dead]
  - derbOac 4y ago
    I do research in this area and I sort of bristle whenever an article talks about "objective measures" of some psychological phenomenon, as if the subjective experience isn't really what it's about. So the framing of this article really rubbed me the wrong way. Having said that, I thought this was still interesting just in terms of the biochemistry and molecular biology of systems involved in anxiety. I think the most practical utility of this might be in drug treatment planning although that tends to not work out in the real world as well as it does in theory and research. Another angle on this kinda mentioned in various places is that people come into the clinic claiming extreme anxiety when they just want drugs to resell or abuse. But even that could get tricky because lots of times people abusing drugs also feel anxiety. One elephant in the room with this paper is they didn't really measure anything else. So it has some predictive utility in "anxiety versus not" in a select group of people, but what if other mood state issues are also moving around with it? It's kind of like saying "hey our model predicts cats in images" in some database where you've removed all the dogs and foxes and otters and so forth and so on. Or maybe it's like having a database where all the images with cats also have a 80% chance of having a dog, fox, etc.?
- gregoriol 4y ago
  If there is a possibility for a simple test that gives a quick and precise answer, it could be better than someone asking someone and interpreting an answer.
Footkerchief 4y ago
Study link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-01998-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-01998-0
blurbleblurble 4y ago
I wonder if this has to do with methylation status? From what I remember there are different metabolic processes that enable shifting between sympathetic and parasympathetic modes, specifically the glutamate/glutamine cycle. People have different ways of handling the nutrients that support this process (e.g. various B vitamins). Switching back and forth between alert and resting states isn't free, and people who have to do it a lot, for whatever reason, can get exhausted in the process. For some people taking vitamin B12 can be a relief, whereas for other people it can worsen anxiety.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  FYI, most of the time when you read an article that reduces complex functions to “methylation status”, it’s pseudoscience. Methylation is a real biological function, but it has been co-opted by alternative medicine peddlers as a convenient (though incorrect) explanation for everything. It’s part of a new wave of alternative medicine that takes real scientific concepts (methylation, glutamate/glutamine cycles) and tries to work backwards from symptoms to assume the status of various cycles in the body. One key feature of this pseudoscience is that it often has dual explanations for everything such that everyone will identify with it. For example, when they say that Vitamin B12 can make some people feel better but some people feel worse, they’re setting up an explanation that everyone will identify with: If you give someone a supplement and ask them to see if they feel better or worse over the coming hours, days, and weeks, eventually they’ll have a good or bad day and assign it to the supplement. The methylation pseudoscience people capitalize on this effect by claiming that all of their interventions will either worsen or improve people’s symptoms, which creates confirmation bias everywhere. One of the easiest ways to debunk the methylation alternative medicine pushers is to examine how almost nobody claims to actually recover from their treatments. It’s always a back and forth of thinking they’re taking too much B12 or folate or other supplements because they’ve been conditioned to believe that all of their symptoms are traceable back to methylation. To be clear, B12 and/or folate deficiencies are real and measurable conditions that should be treated if present. However, the idea that you can modulate all of the body’s processes up and down by taking varying levels of B12 and folate supplements is pseudoscience.
  - 4y ago
henriquez 4y ago
This sounds useful for torturers and interrogators. In most situations medical professionals can just ask someone if they’re feeling anxious.
- feoren 4y ago
  > In most situations medical professionals can just ask someone if they’re feeling anxious. Except they literally refuse to believe your answer. You can swear up and down "I was not anxious, I actually felt great" and they fire back with "many people don't know when they're anxious. You can be anxious without realizing it." It's completely unfalsifiable, like the old asylums where everything you could ever say is just more confirmation of whatever mental illness they already decided you have. If they don't know what's wrong with you and you don't have symptoms that very specifically fit their pre-determined list of the 100 things that might ever be wrong with anyone, then some use "anxiety" as a catch-all, regardless of whether you claim to have it or not. Everyone feels stressed occasionally, so there's no objective way to self-report it. My "very anxious" might be your "normal Tuesday night". They capitalize on this to make it completely impossible to argue with their "diagnosis" so they can get you out the door with a magic pill to fix all your woes, while they move on to the next patient they can give 3 minutes to out of their overbooked 12-hour workday. I would do the same if I were completely overworked in a trainwreck of a system run by incompetent hospital administrators and faceless insurance companies.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > Except they literally refuse to believe your answer. You can swear up and down "I was not anxious, I actually felt great" and they fire back with "many people don't know when they're anxious. You can be anxious without realizing it." It's completely unfalsifiable, like the old asylums where everything you could ever say is just more confirmation of whatever mental illness they already decided you have. My doctor did this with depression. If you question it then you just don't know you have it. If you insist that you don't have it you're just in denial. I just had to take the antidepressant until it started causing sudden emotional breakdowns and then nope the fuck out of there and tell my doctor that's not the problem. Guess what, the real problem was indeed exactly what I came to him claiming I needed treatment for. It was ADHD. Stimulant medication fixed every issue. But he didn't believe me the first time, and led me down a path I knew was wrong for a whole month.
sarojmoh1 4y ago
Anyone here actually find something that works for their anxiety?
- sethrin 4y ago
  So far: alcohol, sympathetic friends. Gonna give zoloft a shot whenever they get around to filling the script.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > alcohol Weed's healthier. Alcohol can help with a lot of the same things, but the side-effects of terrible sleep and hangovers can make the problem worse the next day. I understand weed is also supposed to harm sleep quality, but IME it's not even close to as bad as even a light-buzz amount of alcohol, and weed's never given me a hangover. And it doesn't make you gain weight (directly—munchies, LOL, but then again I get those on alcohol, too, personally).
    - sethrin 4y ago
      Alcohol has maybe given me a hangover once. I also don't typically have more than two drinks in a day, and if I am having a bad enough day to want to use alcohol then that's going to be closer to 2pm than bedtime. Cannabis use is pretty continual these days, being locally legal, but I don't find it very effective for anxiety. But actually one of the main things I'm using for mood regulation these days is programming. It's hard to think about code simultaneously with anything else, and learning coding was among other things a process of learning emotional regulation with regards to coding, because it's not like the computer cares if you find a bug challenging.
    - jwmoz 4y ago
      Weed will probably exacerbate anxiety especially anything that has a cerebral high.
      - eikenberry 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Of the genes they note in the study (GAD1, NTRK3, ADRA2A, FZD10, GRK4, and SLC6A4), I have significant polymorphisms in GAD1, NTRK3, and SLC6A4, But I also carry NOS1AP and GRIN2B changes which also are more highly correlated with anxiety. The NTRK3 was a new one for me. I have Aspergers, Schizoaffective Bipolar Disorder and a panic/anxiety disorder.
user8501 4y ago
Researchers are becoming as useless as programmers
drewbitt 4y ago
I would have loved this. I had been fine my entire life until one day I started feeling panic and subsequently had several panic attacks that week and developed the related agoraphobia. It would have been great to see what biomarkers had changed and ideas on where this suddenly came from. The current treatment doesn’t care about the underline reasons as much as immediately giving you a SSRI.
- Llamamoe 4y ago
  Can you think of ANYTHING unusual around that time, physical or mental?
  - drewbitt 4y ago
    I was taking a lot of supplements - basics like magnesium and fish oil, all the way to choline, some mushrooms, amino acids, EGCG etc. Nothing crazy or illegal but certainly more than the average person takes. Unfortunately even after stopping for months the panic disorder didn’t go away. Otherwise at that time work was easy and my life was not stressful. It’s a mystery.
    - jokowueu 4y ago
      It was probably the choline . Take a look at an SGB shot if you are still dealing with these issues
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      Almost like messing with your own biochemistry caused a change in your biochemistry. I'm glad you moved away from it; nobody needs supplements if they don't have an underlying medical condition and eat normally, no matter what the supplement pushers try to tell you. Also, you mention mushrooms, is that the magic kind? That'll mess with your brain chemistry for sure.
      - drewbitt 4y ago
        Not the magic kind
jasfi 4y ago
Ashwagandha is pretty good at lowering cortisol to normal levels, for anyone interested.
- jokowueu 4y ago
  Be wary of over use . I.kmow.of.1 person who has had permanent issues after a single course https://selfhacked.com/blog/5ht2a-receptors-a-root-cause-of-anxiety-fatigue-sleep-problems-and-cirs/ https://selfhacked.com/blog/5ht2a-receptors-a-root-cause-of-... Ashwandgha is known to knock down 5ht1a receptors and increase 5ht2a receptors if im not mistaken. The reason why theres many reddit threads of people worrying about long term depression and axiety when it comes to ashwandgha
  - jasfi 4y ago
    That's strange, but the article talks about 5HT2A receptors, and not about Ashwagandha. I know you mean that there could be a link in theory though. I'll do some research on this, thanks. Personally I only take a capsule when I'm stressed and it does the trick. I don't take it habitually.

lapcat 4y ago

The test is simple: if you fear getting a blood test, then you have anxiety.

Temporary_31337 4y ago
IMO if you're getting a blood test for anxiety, that also implies one is anxious.
- efitz 4y ago
  I’m not trying to be flippant, but why do we need a blood test for this when we have a test already, eg “Do you have anxiety? Do you have any of these symptoms?”
  - user8501 4y ago
    Seriously. This could be replaced with a one question questionnaire. Are you anxious?
  - Jiocus 4y ago
    Not everyone can identify anxiety symptoms in themselves, especially if they have been experiencing them for so long it's become 'normal'. There's also those that won't report what they are actually feeling, even when asked explicitly, for a range of reasons.
    - LoganDark 4y ago
      This. I've always been aware of every sign of executive dysfunction but never reported it because I thought it was normal. I was 100% aware of it and depressed over it but I thought that it was something that normal people are supposed to be able to just get over but I felt like I just didn't have the willpower and it was my fault. I'm so lucky I talked about "not being able to do the things that I want to do" and someone in the thread noticed and brought up ADHD. I'm on ADHD meds now and it fixes nearly every issue.

boh 4y ago

I'm glad they figured it out since it was impossible to tell any other way.

Zealotux 4y ago
>The test examines biomarkers that can help them objectively determine someone's risk for developing anxiety, the severity of their current anxiety and which therapies would likely treat their anxiety the best. It actually sounds more interesting than the headline suggests.
- loldk 4y ago
  [dead]
- derbOac 4y ago
  I do research in this area and I sort of bristle whenever an article talks about "objective measures" of some psychological phenomenon, as if the subjective experience isn't really what it's about. So the framing of this article really rubbed me the wrong way. Having said that, I thought this was still interesting just in terms of the biochemistry and molecular biology of systems involved in anxiety. I think the most practical utility of this might be in drug treatment planning although that tends to not work out in the real world as well as it does in theory and research. Another angle on this kinda mentioned in various places is that people come into the clinic claiming extreme anxiety when they just want drugs to resell or abuse. But even that could get tricky because lots of times people abusing drugs also feel anxiety. One elephant in the room with this paper is they didn't really measure anything else. So it has some predictive utility in "anxiety versus not" in a select group of people, but what if other mood state issues are also moving around with it? It's kind of like saying "hey our model predicts cats in images" in some database where you've removed all the dogs and foxes and otters and so forth and so on. Or maybe it's like having a database where all the images with cats also have a 80% chance of having a dog, fox, etc.?
gregoriol 4y ago
If there is a possibility for a simple test that gives a quick and precise answer, it could be better than someone asking someone and interpreting an answer.

Footkerchief 4y ago

Study link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-01998-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-01998-0

blurbleblurble 4y ago

I wonder if this has to do with methylation status? From what I remember there are different metabolic processes that enable shifting between sympathetic and parasympathetic modes, specifically the glutamate/glutamine cycle. People have different ways of handling the nutrients that support this process (e.g. various B vitamins). Switching back and forth between alert and resting states isn't free, and people who have to do it a lot, for whatever reason, can get exhausted in the process. For some people taking vitamin B12 can be a relief, whereas for other people it can worsen anxiety.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
FYI, most of the time when you read an article that reduces complex functions to “methylation status”, it’s pseudoscience. Methylation is a real biological function, but it has been co-opted by alternative medicine peddlers as a convenient (though incorrect) explanation for everything. It’s part of a new wave of alternative medicine that takes real scientific concepts (methylation, glutamate/glutamine cycles) and tries to work backwards from symptoms to assume the status of various cycles in the body. One key feature of this pseudoscience is that it often has dual explanations for everything such that everyone will identify with it. For example, when they say that Vitamin B12 can make some people feel better but some people feel worse, they’re setting up an explanation that everyone will identify with: If you give someone a supplement and ask them to see if they feel better or worse over the coming hours, days, and weeks, eventually they’ll have a good or bad day and assign it to the supplement. The methylation pseudoscience people capitalize on this effect by claiming that all of their interventions will either worsen or improve people’s symptoms, which creates confirmation bias everywhere. One of the easiest ways to debunk the methylation alternative medicine pushers is to examine how almost nobody claims to actually recover from their treatments. It’s always a back and forth of thinking they’re taking too much B12 or folate or other supplements because they’ve been conditioned to believe that all of their symptoms are traceable back to methylation. To be clear, B12 and/or folate deficiencies are real and measurable conditions that should be treated if present. However, the idea that you can modulate all of the body’s processes up and down by taking varying levels of B12 and folate supplements is pseudoscience.
- 4y ago

henriquez 4y ago

This sounds useful for torturers and interrogators. In most situations medical professionals can just ask someone if they’re feeling anxious.

feoren 4y ago
> In most situations medical professionals can just ask someone if they’re feeling anxious. Except they literally refuse to believe your answer. You can swear up and down "I was not anxious, I actually felt great" and they fire back with "many people don't know when they're anxious. You can be anxious without realizing it." It's completely unfalsifiable, like the old asylums where everything you could ever say is just more confirmation of whatever mental illness they already decided you have. If they don't know what's wrong with you and you don't have symptoms that very specifically fit their pre-determined list of the 100 things that might ever be wrong with anyone, then some use "anxiety" as a catch-all, regardless of whether you claim to have it or not. Everyone feels stressed occasionally, so there's no objective way to self-report it. My "very anxious" might be your "normal Tuesday night". They capitalize on this to make it completely impossible to argue with their "diagnosis" so they can get you out the door with a magic pill to fix all your woes, while they move on to the next patient they can give 3 minutes to out of their overbooked 12-hour workday. I would do the same if I were completely overworked in a trainwreck of a system run by incompetent hospital administrators and faceless insurance companies.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > Except they literally refuse to believe your answer. You can swear up and down "I was not anxious, I actually felt great" and they fire back with "many people don't know when they're anxious. You can be anxious without realizing it." It's completely unfalsifiable, like the old asylums where everything you could ever say is just more confirmation of whatever mental illness they already decided you have. My doctor did this with depression. If you question it then you just don't know you have it. If you insist that you don't have it you're just in denial. I just had to take the antidepressant until it started causing sudden emotional breakdowns and then nope the fuck out of there and tell my doctor that's not the problem. Guess what, the real problem was indeed exactly what I came to him claiming I needed treatment for. It was ADHD. Stimulant medication fixed every issue. But he didn't believe me the first time, and led me down a path I knew was wrong for a whole month.

sarojmoh1 4y ago

Anyone here actually find something that works for their anxiety?

sethrin 4y ago
So far: alcohol, sympathetic friends. Gonna give zoloft a shot whenever they get around to filling the script.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > alcohol Weed's healthier. Alcohol can help with a lot of the same things, but the side-effects of terrible sleep and hangovers can make the problem worse the next day. I understand weed is also supposed to harm sleep quality, but IME it's not even close to as bad as even a light-buzz amount of alcohol, and weed's never given me a hangover. And it doesn't make you gain weight (directly—munchies, LOL, but then again I get those on alcohol, too, personally).
  - sethrin 4y ago
    Alcohol has maybe given me a hangover once. I also don't typically have more than two drinks in a day, and if I am having a bad enough day to want to use alcohol then that's going to be closer to 2pm than bedtime. Cannabis use is pretty continual these days, being locally legal, but I don't find it very effective for anxiety. But actually one of the main things I'm using for mood regulation these days is programming. It's hard to think about code simultaneously with anything else, and learning coding was among other things a process of learning emotional regulation with regards to coding, because it's not like the computer cares if you find a bug challenging.
  - jwmoz 4y ago
    Weed will probably exacerbate anxiety especially anything that has a cerebral high.
    - eikenberry 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

Of the genes they note in the study (GAD1, NTRK3, ADRA2A, FZD10, GRK4, and SLC6A4), I have significant polymorphisms in GAD1, NTRK3, and SLC6A4, But I also carry NOS1AP and GRIN2B changes which also are more highly correlated with anxiety. The NTRK3 was a new one for me. I have Aspergers, Schizoaffective Bipolar Disorder and a panic/anxiety disorder.

user8501 4y ago

Researchers are becoming as useless as programmers

drewbitt 4y ago

I would have loved this. I had been fine my entire life until one day I started feeling panic and subsequently had several panic attacks that week and developed the related agoraphobia. It would have been great to see what biomarkers had changed and ideas on where this suddenly came from. The current treatment doesn’t care about the underline reasons as much as immediately giving you a SSRI.

Llamamoe 4y ago
Can you think of ANYTHING unusual around that time, physical or mental?
- drewbitt 4y ago
  I was taking a lot of supplements - basics like magnesium and fish oil, all the way to choline, some mushrooms, amino acids, EGCG etc. Nothing crazy or illegal but certainly more than the average person takes. Unfortunately even after stopping for months the panic disorder didn’t go away. Otherwise at that time work was easy and my life was not stressful. It’s a mystery.
  - jokowueu 4y ago
    It was probably the choline . Take a look at an SGB shot if you are still dealing with these issues
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    Almost like messing with your own biochemistry caused a change in your biochemistry. I'm glad you moved away from it; nobody needs supplements if they don't have an underlying medical condition and eat normally, no matter what the supplement pushers try to tell you. Also, you mention mushrooms, is that the magic kind? That'll mess with your brain chemistry for sure.
    - drewbitt 4y ago
      Not the magic kind

jasfi 4y ago

Ashwagandha is pretty good at lowering cortisol to normal levels, for anyone interested.

jokowueu 4y ago
Be wary of over use . I.kmow.of.1 person who has had permanent issues after a single course https://selfhacked.com/blog/5ht2a-receptors-a-root-cause-of-anxiety-fatigue-sleep-problems-and-cirs/ https://selfhacked.com/blog/5ht2a-receptors-a-root-cause-of-... Ashwandgha is known to knock down 5ht1a receptors and increase 5ht2a receptors if im not mistaken. The reason why theres many reddit threads of people worrying about long term depression and axiety when it comes to ashwandgha
- jasfi 4y ago
  That's strange, but the article talks about 5HT2A receptors, and not about Ashwagandha. I know you mean that there could be a link in theory though. I'll do some research on this, thanks. Personally I only take a capsule when I'm stressed and it does the trick. I don't take it habitually.