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Lithium can be an effective treatment for bipolar patients and an effective augmenting agent for unipolar depressed patients, but individual response is unpredictable. In search of a genetic marker for lithium response, investigators examined a possible association between lithium efficacy and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the gene that codes for glycogen synthase kinase 3-beta (GSK3β), an enzyme that helps mediate neuronal development and survival and that is inhibited by lithium treatment.
As part of a German study of an algorithm-driven approach for managing treatment-resistant depression, researchers evaluated 81 inpatients with bipolar or unipolar depression who did not respond to one or more antidepressant trials of at leas…