Dayeon Shin – PI
2018-2019 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant Award
Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and more than 300 million people of all ages suffer from depression according to the World Health Organization. Epidemiological studies have shown that both dietary and genetic factors play a predominant role in mental health such as depression. The effect of dietary exposures on the risk of depression may vary by genetic predisposition, with potential for interactions between genes and dietary factors. The increasing prevalence of depression may be due to unhealthy dietary patterns, pro-inflammatory diets, and different genetic variations/susceptibility to depression between individuals. To date, there has been little research identifying the interactions between genes, specifically depression-associated genetic susceptibility (single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) variants) and dietary factors on the risk of depression in a representative sample of the U.S. adult population.
Depression results from a complex interplay of genetic vulnerability and environmental factors. Diet is one of the important and modifiable environmental factors, and there may be a variation in the risk of depression with the food consumption between individuals. This may be explained by variation in the genetic polymorphisms. The overall objective of this proposed study is to identify the interactions between gene-diet relationships in depression using nutrigenetics as a concept to highlight the interplay between genetic variants and diet.
The study findings may highlight the importance of having a variety of foods and nutrients and anti-inflammatory properties of diet in preventing the risk of depression, particularly in individuals genetically predisposed to depression. Given the urgent need to reduce the increasing prevalence and the serious comorbidities associated with depression in affected adults in the U.S., identifying the genetic variants and its interactions with dietary factors that significantly affect depression is an important step in understanding the pathophysiology of development of depression in U.S. adults.