Scientists believe they have identified gene variations that increase the risk of depression in people of European ancestry.
The new study, published in Nature Genetics, took DNA data from over 300,000 people - over 75,000 of whom had reported a clinical diagnosis of depression or said they were actively being treated for depression.
Depression is estimated to affect 1 in 10 Irish people. According to Aware, a voluntary organisation which supports people with depression, 300,000 people in Ireland suffer from depression.
Researchers found 17 genetic variations, located in 15 different regions of the genome, that may play a part in someone developing depression.
It is believed that some forms of depression run in families but prior to this study conventional genome-wide studies had failed to reliably identify chromosomal sites associated with the illness in populations of European descent.
In order to increase their chances of detecting these genes the team adopted a strategy of studying much larger samples than had been used in earlier studies.
They analyzed common genetic variation in 75,607 people of European ancestry who self-reported being diagnosed or treated for depression and 231,747 healthy controls of similar ethnicity.
Dr. Ashley Winslow, Director of Neurogenetics at University of Pennsylvania, participated in the study.
She told Newstalk Breakfast that the research was part of a collaboration between Pfizer, 23andme and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Through this collaboration we conducted a study utilising the 23andme research. They have a very large number of individuals in their data set who reported a diagnosis of depression or treatment for depression.
"We found 15 different regions in the genome in individuals of European descent that associated with a change in their risk for developing depression."
Dr Winslow said that this research could help us understand what exactly causes depression.
"In the past we haven't seen significant findings or significant associations for genetic changes in risk of depression. This study is significant in that not only have we found new signals we actually found 15 different regions which could start to give us a hint about the underlying biology of depression."
