Anxiety Disorders Discoverable by Blood Test

Tomer Yaffe writes to tell us that researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have discovered a technique to diagnose anxiety disorders with a simple blood test. From the article: "The researchers hope that the anxiety blood test will soon make its way into hospitals and E.R. rooms and give doctors and psychiatrists a quick and precise tool for examining, and eventually treating, these disorders." The team has also set their sights on depression, hoping for a similar technique to detect these types of disorders as well.

Comments

What if their anxiety disorders involve needles?

[glen604]

then they'd be really screwed..

Stop squirming away from the needle! We need to run this test on you!

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Hey Pope Felcher . .]

. . . in that case the test would be fairly conclusive.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[jd]

That makes anxiety easy to test for. If there's no blood in the caffeine stream, then they're suffering from excessive anxiety. You can then diagnose the type of anxiety by whether the largest fraction of non-caffeine substance is tea, coffee or chocolate.

Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[techstar25]

Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise to tell us that it's all in our imagination and we just need exercise to chase those blues away!

It works like this, simply

[matt me]

If they won't let you take their blood for the test, they've got a disorder!

In other news...

[command_not_recogniz]

Anxiety Blood Test results to be tracked with RFID. IBM corporation swears there's nothing to be anxious about...

Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a point, counterpoint and then a reaffirmation of the first point and nobody said the other one was stupid? Is today OPPOSITE DAY!?

Re:Wait a second...

[cammoblammo]

Plus they all used big words, correctly!

Is it possible we've got informed debate on /.?

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[MoogMan]

Perhaps anxious people go to Caffeine as an answer. Then get hooked on harder drugs such as Coding and Linux.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Rei]

This actually reminds me a bit of the home headache test.

Wife: "Oh, God, I'm in agony!"
Husband (holding strip): "Honey, you don't have a headache."
Wife: "Oh, thank God!"

Hopefully they'll get this for ADD as well ...

[SuperDuG]

I was going to get tested for ADD, but that would take so long, not to mention I'd have to look up the place to get the test done, then have to go there, wait for them to administer the test, and then wait for the results.

I just don't have the attention span for that kind of commitment. Anyways, time to go find something else to post about...

I know I've stolen this from numerous comedians ...

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[sapped]

Each visit resulted in a different hypothesis on what was wrong with me, from dehydration to renault's syndrome.

Tsk. Lucky you. I was recently diagnosed with Porsche syndrome. Unlike Renault, the Porsche syndrome leads to increased bloodflow which can only be countered with huges doses of adrenaline to even things out.

However, I still consider myself to be relatively lucky. A friend was diagnosed with Trabant syndrome. Now that is cause for anxiety...

Is this for the greater good?

[ninjagumby]

As someone with extreme anxiety and depression, successfully treated with standard medications of today, if this test were to come back and say I didn't have one or either, would that have pushed me over the edge of insanity?

Is this really adding to the value of anxiety treatment?

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Johnboi Waltune]

(By the way, I am just joking.)

They cheated

[sconeu]

It's from Hebrew University.

Blood test: compare DNA sample to that of a Jewish mother.
If there's a relationship, then the testee has an anxiety disorder.

Disclaimer: I'm Jewish.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right you know. I knew a guy that posted Anonymous Coward on slashdot. Ten years later, *BAM* herpes.

Scientological Explanation for These Results

[billstewart]

Scientology has Proven (tm) that the causes of your problems are related to the past lives of uptight dead space aliens called Thetans, and that you can cure your problems by getting your Inner Space Alien (ISA) into a better mood. But that's no contradiction to these results, because Scientology can make use of any other "real" science, and only objects to fake sciences like psychotherapy. You see, String Theory tells us that everything is made up of little tiny strings, and when your Thetans feel anxious and need to get your body to react anxiously so it's ready to fight or run away from whatever they're worried about, they start pulling on the little strings that trigger the neurotransmitters to let your body know what to do. The reason they do it this way is that Xenu can't read the chemicals remotely, though the little strings are triggered by mental energy that can be read more precisely with a very complex expensive device called an E-meter.

The big difference between Scientology's theories and Pastafarianism's is that anybody can make up stuff about the Flying Spaghetti Monster out of whole cloth, but only El-Ron and a few of his successors are Allowed to make up Official Scientology Stuff unless they want Bad Things to happen to them.