Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry

Most suicides(about 90%) occur in the context of psychiatric disorders. Prediction of suicide risk in patients with mental illness is very important in preventing suicide attempts. However, current approaches to predict suicidality are based on clinical history and have low specificity and biological markers are not yet included. Many studies have explored the association between different biological parameters and suicidality. Studies of cerebro-spinal fluid(CSF) demonstrated that 5-HIAA and HVA levels were lower in patients with a history of suicide. Platelet serotonin transporter and the 5-HT2 serotonin receptor have also been studied in relation to violence and suicide. Depressive patients with greater suicidal tendency had significantly lower cholesterol concentrations but some researchers failed to find the correlation. DST non-supression is reported to predict suicidality in major depression. Several studies demonstrated a relationship between intron 7 polymorphism of tryptophan hydroxylase and suicidal behavior. Since suicide is not occurred in a single disease, the systematic and comprehensive study in large samples with various diagnoses is necessary to find the biological and genetic predictors of suicidal behavior.

Keywords Suicide;Biological marker;Genetic marker;Prediction;Serotonin;Neurotransmitter.