Page 112 - Genomic Medicine in Emerging Economies

CHAPTER 6

Implementing Genomics in the Care

of Neuropsychiatric Patients in Latin

America

Diego A. Forero*, Hermes Urriago*, Sandra Lopez-Leon**, Yeimy
González-Giraldo , Debora M. de Miranda , Camilo A. Espinosa Jovel §
‡
†
*Universidad Antonio Nariño, Bogotá, Colombia; **Novartis Pharmaceuticals
†
Corporation, East Hanover, NJ, United States; Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá,
‡
Colombia; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Hospital de
§
Kennedy, Bogotá, Colombia

INTRODUCTION
Neuropsychiatric disorders (NPDs) lead to a high disease burden in Latin
American countries (Kohn et al., 2005; Whiteford et al., 2015). An understand-
ing of the multiple risk and causal factors for NPDs is of particular impor-
tance, considering that some of these entities have a significant heritability
(Zoghbi and Warren, 2010). In this chapter, we review the previous and current
advances in research into neuropsychiatric genetics (NPG) in Latin America
(Cordeiro et al., 2009b; Forero et al., 2014).

Epidemiological Impact of Neurological Diseases and
Psychiatric Disorders in Latin America
NPDs have an important impact on the total mortality, morbidity, and dis-
ability in all stages of life; they represent 22% of the total burden of disease in
Latin America. Previous work from the World Health Organization (for exam-
ple, the Global Burden of Disease Study) has shown that psychiatric disorders
(PDs) and neurological diseases (NDs) represent a huge challenge for global
public health and biomedical research, in terms of years lived with disability
(YLDs) and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (Demyttenaere et al., 2004;
Disease, Injury, & Prevalence, 2016; Vigo et al., 2016; Whiteford et al., 2015).
In relationship to DALYs, major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorders,
migraine, alcohol dependence, epilepsy, schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disor-
der (BP), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementias have the highest
impact (Whiteford et al., 2015).

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