People who suffer from bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses have a high risk of suicide, but doctors in the near future may receive blood test kits and special software that will warn in advance about the dangerous intentions of the patient.

Researchers from the School of Medicine of the University of Indiana (USA) in the journal Molecular Psychiatry on Tuesday reported that they developed a blood test and mobile application that, when used in the complex, can predict suicidal attempts with an accuracy of 92%.

If you use only the mobile application with the questionnaire, the accuracy reaches 80%.

Using blood analysis, scientists determine the content of several RNA biomarkers, after which they take these programs and calculate the risk of suicidal attempts in a particular patient. According to the creator of the new system, Dr. Alexander Nikulescu, it was developed specifically for patients with bipolar disorder who in the past have tried to take their lives - for such patients, the test is more accurate (92% for bipolar disorder, 71% for other diseases ).

To develop a unique "blood test for suicidal ideation," the researchers scored 217 patients with mental illness, observed by Dr. Niculescu, a professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues from the local medical center. Among the diagnoses were bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia and schizoaffective psychosis.

The risk of suicide was determined using a mobile application-questionnaire developed by the Laboratory of Neurogenomics of the Institute of Psychiatric Research at the University of Indiana, where Professor Niculescu. Questions related to the physical and mental state, bad habits and dependencies, cultural characteristics, stress level, etc..

Thanks to the questionnaire, scientists were able to anticipate and prevent 37 suicide attempts in time, after which they took blood samples from patients and tried to find biomarkers that could indicate the willingness of patients to commit suicide.

Several RNA molecules were ideally suited to this role, which they calculated due to the advances in convergent functional genomics. As a result, there was the world's first blood test for biomarkers of suicide, which, combined with a questionnaire on a mobile phone, gives tremendous results.

"We are confident that the introduction of such tests into everyday practice will allow doctors to intervene in a timely manner in a dangerous situation and save thousands of lives," said Niculescu.

medbe. en.

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