Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders and are associated with immense health care costs. It is slowly becoming the world's biggest mental health problem.
According to a report by the World Economic Forum, an estimated 275 million people suffer from anxiety disorders. That's around 4% of the global population, with a spread of between 2.5% and 6.5% of population per country. Around 62% of those suffering from anxiety are female (170 million), compared with 105 million male sufferers.
To address this mental problem, numerous scientific institutions are continuously researching possible solutions. A team of scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine has developed a blood test for anxiety as a result of that effort.
According to the study, the test examines biomarkers that can help them objectively determine someone's risk for developing anxiety, the severity of their current anxiety, and which therapies would likely treat their anxiety the best.
The blood tests are currently being developed for wider use by doctors by Indianapolis-based startup MindX Sciences, which was created on research produced at the IU School of Medicine. The study results were recently published in Molecular Psychiatry.
"Many people are suffering from anxiety, which can be very disabling and interfere with daily life," said professor of psychiatry Alexander Niculescu, MD, PhD.
"The current approach is to talk to people about how they feel to see if they could be on medications, but some medications can be addictive and create more problems. We wanted to see if our approach to identify blood biomarkers could help us match people to existing medications that will work better and could be a non-addictive choice."
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