The Cons of Studying Genome-Wide DNA Methylation in Psychiatric Disorders

Though epigenetics has improved the medical field, it has certain limitations. Most psychiatric diseases are heterogeneous syndromes with multiple causes, and their symptoms can only be inferred in human models (Wockner et al., 2014). A study by Guidotti et al. (2014) on the identification of epigenetic biomarkers of schizophrenia outlines that the study of biomarkers from the peripheral tissues such as leukocytes cannot be used to rule out some of the epigenetic signatures occurring in the brain. The epigenetic markers such of DNA methylation differ between leukocyte subtypes. In cases where there are difficulties using human specimens for studies, animal specimens can be used by first inducing the disorder in the animal