Year: 2017 Source: Molecular Psychiatry. (2017). 22(9): 1250–1273. doi: 10.1038/mp.2017.128 SIEC No: 20170483

Suicide remains a clear, present and increasing public health problem, despite being a potentially preventable tragedy. Its incidence is particularly high in people with overt or un(der)diagnosed psychiatric disorders. Objective and precise identification of individuals at risk, ways of monitoring response to treatments and novel preventive therapeutics need to be discovered, employed and widely deployed. We sought to investigate whether blood gene expression biomarkers for suicide (that is, a ‘liquid biopsy’ approach) can be identified that are more universal in nature, working across psychiatric diagnoses and genders, using larger cohorts than in previous studies.