Predictive Power of Genes: Stronger but Not Ready for the Clinic

With the recent sequencing of the human genome and the cataloguing in HapMap of human genetic variation, psychiatrists have begun to hope that genetic information can be used to develop more “personalized” approaches to their practice. In particular, clinicians would like to enhance their ability to predict the risk for development of illness and the likelihood of response to specific treatments.

This past year, investigators have tested the stress–diathesis model of psychiatric illness and shown that stress is more likely to provoke psychiatric illness in genetically vulnerable individuals than in those without that vulnerability. We have learned that a specific variant of the corticotropin-releasing hormone type 1 receptor (CRHR1) gene mod…