Background & methods: Researchers have aimed to understand the mechanisms of antipsychotics through epigenetics to inform interindividual response rates. However, findings have widely varied across studies, making advancement in the field difficult. Materials & methods: A systematic review was performed to include all epigenome-wide studies of antipsychotic treatment in humans. Methylation sites were used for a pathway and enrichment map analysis was conducted. Results & conclusion: Seven studies were included and 82 methylation sites were used for the exploratory pathway meta-analysis that identified six pathway clusters. The findings here demonstrate that studies of the epigenome and antipsychotic treatment are highly heterogeneous in nature and could inform future work to target cross-cutting gene sets and pathways.
Keywords: antipsychotic; methylation; pathway; review; systematic.
Antipsychotics are a medication used for the treatment of individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Antipsychotics work well, but some patients do not respond to treatment and some get side effects from the treatment, and we are not sure why. A possible reason could be how marks on our DNA interact with antipsychotics in a process called epigenetics. This area of research has been ongoing but requires a summary and report of the results together. This review aims to provide such a report so that one day antipsychotic treatment can be improved so that more patients respond and fewer get side effects.