Suicide can be predicted using blood biomarkers

Researchers in the USA have shown that suicide in living people can be predicted using a panel of biomarkers in the blood. They took a functional genomics technique that has been used successfully to find genes associated with other psychiatric conditions like alcoholism and schizophrenia and applied it to a number of people with bipolar disorder that were assessed for suicidality. This was backed up by similar genetics studies on the blood of people who had committed suicide, as described in Molecular Psychiatry.

By matching the biomarkers in the live subjects with those from the people who did kill themselves, they identified a panel of compounds that appeared to predict the propensity towards suicide. The key one was the enzyme spermidine/spermine N1–acetyltransferase 1, which was present at increased levels in people with suicidal states. This was complemented by three other prominent compounds.

The beauty of the approach, if it can be confirmed in a larger set of subjects, is that there is no need to ask the people how they are feeling. They might simply deny feeling suicidal to choose not to communicate at all. The blood test says it all.

Principal investigator Alexander Niculescu III said "Suicide is a big problem in psychiatry. It's a big problem in the civilian realm, it's a big problem in the military realm and there are no objective markers." He believes the results provide a first "proof of principle" for a test that could provide an early warning of somebody being at higher risk for an impulsive suicide act.  

The study needs to be expanded to cover a wider range of ethnicity and should consider gender effects and other types of mental disorder. However, it could develop into an invaluable means of preventing some of the 1 million suicides that occur each year.