{"id":175249,"date":"2023-11-01T01:24:18","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T06:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/scientists-discover-anxiety-gene-in-the-brain-and-a-natural-way-to-turn-it-off"},"modified":"2023-11-01T01:24:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T06:24:18","slug":"scientists-discover-anxiety-gene-in-the-brain-and-a-natural-way-to-turn-it-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/scientists-discover-anxiety-gene-in-the-brain-and-a-natural-way-to-turn-it-off","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover \u201canxiety gene\u201d in the brain \u2014 and a natural way to turn it off"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A UK-led team of researchers restrained mice for 6 hours to induce a stress response and then analyzed the rodents\u2019 brains on a molecular level.\u2060<\/p>\n

This led to the discovery of increased levels of five microRNAs (miRNAs) \u2014 small molecules that help determine which genes in a cell are expressed and which aren\u2019t \u2014 in the amygdala, the brain region implicated in anxiety. When the researchers took a closer look at the miRNA that reached the highest levels, miR-483-5p, they saw that it suppressed the expression of the Pgap2 gene \u2014 and that this suppression appeared to provide stress relief and reduce anxiety-related behavior.\u2060<\/p>\n

\u27a1\ufe0f<\/p>\n

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The discovery of an \u201canxiety gene\u201d \u2014 and a natural way to turn it off \u2014 in the brains of mice could lead to new treatments for anxiety disorders, which are the most common<\/a> type of mental illness in the world.<\/p>\n

The challenge:<\/strong> While anyone can experience worry or dread, people with anxiety disorders<\/a> experience those feelings pervasively and often for no identifiable reason.<\/p>\n

Medications<\/a> can relieve the symptoms of anxiety<\/a>, but because we don\u2019t really<\/em> know what is going on in the brains of people with anxiety, finding the right drug or combination of drugs can be a time-consuming process of trial and error<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Continue reading \u201cScientists discover \u201canxiety gene\u201d in the brain \u2014 and a natural way to turn it off\u201d | ><\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UK-led team of researchers restrained mice for 6 hours to induce a stress response and then analyzed the rodents\u2019 brains on a molecular level.\u2060 This led to the discovery of increased levels of five microRNAs (miRNAs) \u2014 small molecules that help determine which genes in a cell are expressed and which aren\u2019t \u2014 in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}