【論】Ohmori,2005,Assessment of human stress and dep～

Tetsuro Ohmori, Kyoko Morita, Toshiro Saito, Masayuki Ohta, Shu-ichi Ueno,and Kazuhito Rokutan
Assessment of human stress and depression by DNA microarray analysis
J. Med. Invest. 52 Suppl.:266-271, November,2005
[PDF][Web Site]

・マクロアレイによるストレス測定とうつ病の診断。遺伝子は末梢血液の白血球より採取。
★実験その1：ストレス測定
・遺伝子データベースの情報を基に、ストレスに反応する遺伝子1467個を選抜し、マイクロアレイをデザイン。
・被験者は博士課程の学生。論文の口頭発表（ストレス）の前後でサンプルを採取し比較する。
★実験その2：うつ病診断
・うつ病患者と健常者のサンプルを比較。

・問題点「Precise assessment of stress is an imminent issue to deal with stress-related social, medical and psychological problems.」
・問題点「Measurement of one of these hormones or cytokines has been used to objectively assess the levels of stress. However, their usefulness as a biological marker is limited, because of the unsatisfactory sensitivity and/or specificity.」
・概要「In a series of studies, we have developed a cDNA array specifically designed to measure the mRNA levels of stress-related genes in periheral blood leukocytes (12).」
・結果「Thus, psychological stress actives multiple signaling pathways ; therefore it is difficult to fully explain the biological significance of several other genes. With regard to the significantly down-regulated genes, however, the life event stress generally downregulated mRNA expression for growth-related genes and cytochrome c oxidase subunits.」
・問題点「However, studies have shown that depression, which lacks specific objective findings, if often missed or undiagnosed (25).」
・結果「These alterations were different from those observed in volunteers after stress or those in preliminary samples of patients with schizophrenia.」
・利点「The microarray method has a great advantage over pervious biological markers in that it can utilize hundreds of parameters from a small amount of peripheral blood cells.」

・これまでの研究はガンをはじめとする "肉体" の領域の診断が主だったが、ストレスやうつ病などの "精神" の領域の診断に応用するという野心的なテーマ。血液さえ検査すれば、たとえ黙っていたとしても精神的疾患が診断できてしまうというのは、ちょっとオドロキ。将来は性格検査なんかも血液検査（遺伝子）でできてしまうのでしょうか。
・図や表は一切無くテキストオンリー。こんなんでも論文として通るのですねぇ。