Is This the Bipolar Gene?

Everyone take a deep breath. Australian scientists recently announced what is being termed "the bipolar gene." Press account here. Abstract of the paper here. What's amusing to me is that this announcement hasn't been picked up on by the mainstream media, which makes me wonder about our America-centric media. What's impressive about the evidence pointing to this gene is it was established using completely different patient populations, family studies and even was found to be present in animal studies. Ok, so this is a really big clue, if you are inclined to believe that bipolar is genetically based. I think something on the order of 80 percent of bipolar disorder can be explained by genetics. The trouble is that, historically, such assertions of this or that gene being at the root of the disorder have not been replicated, which means they were bunk in terms of explaining the mechanism of bipolar. In this case, confirmation from four populations is impressive. Two cautionary notes: the researchers have stated that it may explain only 10 percent of the cases of the disorder and, two, even if the protein coding going on with the FAT gene does explain 10 percent of bipolar cases, it will be 10 to 15 years before a new compound or med or gene therapy is developed that will address the proteins being given off. There is evidence from the mouse population that Lithium does tend to affect the expression of the FAT gene. Maybe this explains, to engage in speculation, why Lithium does have a robust response for a good chunk of the bipolar crowd. Still, no one should go out and buy champagne yet.