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The field of psychiatry has been in continual search of objective tests to replace the highly subjective processes of diagnosis and treatment choice. In a manufacturer-funded study, researchers aimed to replicate an earlier study on the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of a blood test for depression that uses nine biomarkers, including cortisol and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and is scored from 1 to 9. Four authors are employees of the manufacturer.
Adjustments were made for cortisol diurnal variation, sex, and body-mass index. In 68 subjects with major depression and 86 subjects with no psychiatric illness, the test was highly sensitive, identifying 94% of depressed patients, and highly specific, identifying 92% of nondepressed…