Introduction to Psychiatric Disorders
In the past few years, psychiatric disorders have been considered as a major serious illness that affects the thoughts, actions, and behavior of patients. Psychiatric disorders have been classified into various types according to specific symptoms, including but not limited to, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. Up to now, a wide variety of signs and symptoms of psychiatric disorders, such as excessive fears, alcohol or drug abuse, communication problems, and serious violence. Meanwhile, pilot studies have demonstrated that inherited traits and frequent stress have become the main cause of psychiatric disorders. The data have suggested that most patients with psychiatric disorders are under the constant pressure of life and work or have a genetic history of psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, different kinds of complications, including heart diseases and immune diseases, have been found in many psychiatric disorder cases.
Fig.1 The most promising repositioning drug candidates (blue) that target the genes (red) unique to schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder. (Dias, 2020)
Pharmaceuticals Treatment for Psychiatric Disorders
Currently, pharmaceuticals have been heralded as ways of using biological and chemical information to develop a new class of drugs in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Many reports have revealed that a large number of drugs have been broadly used for treating certain types of psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety disorders. For instance, a series of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonergic drugs, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), have been generated and proven their significant role in the anti-depression activity. In a recent study, several compounds have been synthesized for neuropsychiatric disorders therapy based on a high-throughput single-cell characterization platform. Primary T lymphocytes exhibit functional responses similar to neuropsychotics and central nervous system ligands at potential drug targets.
However, recent researches have shown that several drugs may be associated with severe adverse reactions or drug resistance in clinical use. The results have suggested that patients treated with antidepressants 8%-18% have side effects, and 25–35% have no response to the medicine.
As a consequence, novel drugs should be further developed for improving patient outcomes. Nowadays, pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic approaches have been regarded as new strategies for discovering drugs against psychiatric disorders. These methods mainly focus on identifying effective drug candidate targets and studying gene polymorphisms associated with drug response. Besides, pharmacogenetics techniques could also be used to modify drug targets to reduce their potential adverse reactions in clinical applications. In general, the alleles related to adverse drug reactions can be identified rapidly by genotyping of clinical trial subjects.
Reference
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Dias, T. L.; et al. Drug repositioning for psychiatric and neurological disorders through a network medicine approach. Translational psychiatry. 2020, 10(1): 1-10. Distributed under Open Access license CC BY 4.0, without modification.
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