VCU Collaboration Across Countries

By Sathya Achia Abraham

Virginia Commonwealth University hosted a week-long training session for a delegation of psychiatrists from China involved in a research study on the molecular genetics of depression.

This study is a collaboration between doctors based at VCU and in Shanghai, China, and researchers from the University of Oxford in England.

The delegation’s visit was the result of VCU’s partnership with Fudan University, part of VCU’s efforts to internationalize its campuses. During his presidency, VCU President Eugene P. Trani has established significant linkages with universities in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia. By the end of 2007, VCU will have developed university-wide partnerships with 15 universities, most with academic medical centers, that will include universities in India, South America and Mexico.

The workshop, to aid in the assessment of depression in study participants, took place July 23 through July 26. The goal of the study is to identify genetic variants which impact on the risk for recurrent major depression.

According to Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and human genetics in VCU’s School of Medicine and one of the investigators in this study, the focus of the pilot project is to gather 1,000 women with cases of recurrent major depression and 1,000 women without the condition to be used as controls. Study participants will be made up of women who are of Han Chinese background – so the participants will be genetically and ethnically homogeneous. Additionally, he said, women in China have very low rates of alcohol and drug abuse.

“As one of the world’s largest studies of depression, we expect the results to have implications for our understanding of the causes and treatment of this common and disabling condition,” said Kendler.

“This is just the beginning of our medical exchange,” said Shen Xun Shi, M.D., who is the director of psychiatry of Huashan Hospital of Fudan University. “This is the first time we have collaborated with Dr. Kendler. We will take these new skills and techniques to share with our colleagues in China.”

During the workshop held at VCU’s Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, attendees were instructed on how to assess depression in study participants using detailed research instruments. This involved learning some new interview skills through role playing. These interview skills differ from those used to asses clinic patients on a daily basis. Also, the nuances of questioning used to assess clinic patients differs from how questioning is done in a scientific research setting. There are also a variety of layers to the research interview process, which is estimated to take approximately 60 to 90 minutes.

Next, the delegates will return to China and begin to train other doctors in various health systems on how to assess for depression among study participants and to begin data collection. Kendler, along with Lisa Halberstadt, also with the VCU Department of Human Genetics, will visit Shanghai in the next few months to assist with the training program.

The delegates who took part in the week-long training included Dr. Shen Xun Shi, Dr. FuZhong Yang, and Qin Guo, from Huashan Hospital of Fudan University; Dr. Yuan Shen, from TongJi Hospital at TongJi University; Dr. Jiangyin Qiu, Dr. WenHong Cheng and Yong Xu, from the ShangHai Mental Health Center; and XiaoYuan Duan, M.D., with Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University.

Jonathan Flint, a professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University, is a key investigator in the study, which is funded by National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD).