Discovery That Common Mood Disorders Are Inherited Together May Reveal Genetic Underpinnings: ‘The genetic underpinnings of panic disorder and manic depressive (bipolar) illness have long eluded scientists. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins studying the inheritance patterns of these conditions have concluded that they probably are not separate diseases at all, but different forms of a shared and complex biological condition.

“We’ve shown that panic attacks and panic disorder are related genetically to bipolar disorder and therefore likely share a common cause,” says Dean F. MacKinnon, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Hopkins and lead author of a report on the study in the current issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. “We still can’t say what specific gene or genes cause what, but this is a major step toward solving these problems,” says MacKinnon.’ PsychLinx

We already know that anxiety and mood disorders share some common neurochemical underpinnings, because antidepressants are the best anti-anxiety medications as well. There are few “textbook cases” of either pure anxiety or pure depression untinged by the other. Clinicians have suspected that anxiety disorders evolve into more chronic, depressive conditions longitudinally. But, especially if this genetic analysis leads to the identification of a common locus, this is big news. Science Daily