Women Carry A Higher Risk Of Depression Genetically, Study Says
A new recently published study has found that women carry a higher genetic risk of depression. The research was published this week in Nature Communications, and has claimed to be the largest genetic study on major depression in different sexes. It found 16 genetic variants linked to depression in women and eight in men.
Australia’s QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute led the study, which showed a large amount of the genetic variants linked to depression were shared between the sexes, but were “higher burden of genetic risk in females which could be due to female-specific variants,” according to the Guardian.
“We already know that females are twice as likely to suffer from depression in their lifetime than males,” said Dr. Brittany Mitchell, a senior researcher at QIMR Berghofer’s genetic epidemiology lab.
“We also know that depression looks very different from one person to another. Until now, there hasn’t been much consistent research to explain why depression affects females and males differently, including the possible role of genetics.”
The study also emphasized previous research and knowledge regarding the higher rate of depression in women and its links to behavioral, environmental, and pre-existing biological factors. One of these factors includes the fact that men are less likely to seek out counseling and treatment.
Women are also more exposed to sexual abuse and interpersonal violence, which is one of the biggest environmental factors for these findings.
The study stated that these factors emphasize the need for a “multifaceted approach” in order to understand all the underlying mechanisms of depression, and “proposed that a key component of the biological mechanisms underlying these disparities could be differences in genetics.”
For the study, researchers looked at DNA from five international cohorts: Australia, the Netherlands, United States and two from the United Kingdom, the Guardian reported. Their final sample size included 130,471 women and 64,805 men with major depression, as well as 159,521 women and 132,185 men without the diagnosis.
The authors acknowledged that the study included about twice the amount of women with depression as men, so they performed additional analyses to ensure their findings were not caused by the difference in sample sizes.
They also found a stronger genetic correlation in women between depression and metabolic traits when compared to men with the same traits.
Dr Jodi Thomas, the lead researcher, said “these genetic differences may help explain why females with depression more often experience metabolic symptoms, such as weight changes or altered energy levels.”
Professor Philip Mitchell, from the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of New South Wales, said: “there has been longstanding debate about the reasons for the consistent finding around the world that depression is more common in females than males, with most studies reporting that women have two to three times the risk of depression compared to men.”
“The most dominant theories have been related to social and psychological factors, for example the impact of the female role in caring for families compared to the income earning role of males, or personality vulnerabilities in women,” said Mitchell.
“This very interesting novel genetic study in a very large global study provides strong evidence that these differences in rates of depression may in fact be due to genetic factors, with the statistically significant finding of more depression risk regions in the genome in females compared to males, and little overlap in these regions between males and females.”
“As well as strengthening the evidence that the differences in depression rates between men and women may be largely due to biological factors, it also points to the future possibility of different pharmacological treatments for depression in women and men, as the biological systems coded for by these genetic regions become better understood.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
