Personalized medicine: Prediction of disease vulnerability in mood disorders

Personalized or precision medicine is a medical discipline that proposes tailoring health care to each individual by integrating data from their genetic makeup, epigenetic modifications, other biomarkers, clinical symptoms and environmental exposures. Currently, patients typically present for treatment of mood disorders relatively late in the disease course and this is of great concern both because delay in attaining remission reduces the success of subsequent treatment and depressive episodes have negative cumulative effects on the brain and body. In this article we will discuss progress in personalized medicine for predicting disease vulnerability for major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. We will review non-biological risk factors, genetic factors, epigenetic factors, as well as the roll of neuroimaging and electroencephalograms. Putting together this information will poise psychiatrists to make biological, system-based evaluations for their patients.