Genes Affect Antidepressant Response

Variations in two different genes affect people’s response to antidepressant drugs, say Korean researchers.

Hyeran Kim and his colleagues at the Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, Korea noted that initial drug treatments fail in 30 to 40 percent of patients with major depression, and set out to improve that statistic.

They studied the effectiveness of norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (NRIs) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in 241 male and female Korean patients with major late-life depression.

They found that patients with the GG polymorphism (variation) of the norepinephrine transporter (NET) gene G1287A respond better to therapy with NRIs than SSRIs (83.3 percent vs. 58.7 percent, respectively).

The team also saw that polymorphisms in the serotonin transporter gene 5-HTT affect a patient’s response to SSRIs, and that the 5-HTTLPR s/l polymorphism of 5-HTT plays a role in therapy with both agents.

The authors said that their findings, if confirmed in other populations and age groups for these and other drugs, would permit the refined pharmacogenetic selection of antidepressant treatment.

A report on the study can be found in the October 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association