Suicide has been suggested to involve catecholaminergic dysfunction and to be related to genetics. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) 158Val/Met polymorphism (GenBank Accession No. Z26491) is a polymorphism of the gene encoding COMT, a major enzyme in catecholamine inactivation. The COMT 158Val/Met polymorphism affects COMT activity, that is, the alleles encoding Val and Met are associated with relatively high and relatively low COMT activity, respectively. In this study, we hypothesized that the COMT 158Val/Met polymorphism is associated with suicide. The study population consisted of 163 suicide completers (112 males and 51 females). We found that the genotype distribution of the COMT 158Val/Met polymorphism was significantly different between male suicide completers and male controls (p ¼ 0.036), while the frequency of the Val/Val genotype, a highactivity COMT genotype, was significantly less in male suicide completers than in male controls (OR: 0.52; 95% CL: 0.31-0.89; p ¼ 0.016). However, this was not the case in females. Our results suggest that the Val/Val genotype is a protective factor against suicide in males.

Aims:The relationship between suicide and disaster is an important problem but it's not clear. We conducted this study to determine whether a natural disaster affects suicide rates. Methods:We collected data on suicides during the 84 months before and the 60 months after the earthquake and compared the suicide rate in Kobe to that in Japan as a whole. We also examined what groups were significantly affected. Results:Compared with Japan as a whole, the suicide rates in Kobe significantly decreased in the 2 years after the earthquake.Conclusions: An influence on suicide rate after the disaster clearly appeared in middle-aged men.Key words: Kobe city, natural disaster, stress, suicides.T HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN suicide and disaster is an important problem.1 Since the English translation of Le Suicide in 1952, David Emile Durkheim has stood preeminently during the last half of the 20th century as the presumed founder of scientific suicidology.2 Durkheim's taxonomy of suicide flowed from the central theme about the regulative role of social control.3 The central hypothesis of Le Suicide is that, when social conditions fail to provide people with the necessary regulation of their lives, their psychological health is compromised and the most vulnerable among them commit suicide.3 He differentiated three types of suicide: anomic, egoistic and obligatory (or altruistic) forms, and suggested that a common external threat decreased anomie and hence the suicide rate, 4 but it has not been proven.In this study, we prospectively investigated the relationship between the suicide rate and a severe natural disaster, the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. We addressed three issues: (i) the effects of the disaster on the suicide rate; (ii) how long the suicide rate was influenced after the disaster; and (iii) as Imamura (1995) suggested that the elderly and men have a tendency to kill themselves after a disaster, 5 we also examined which groups were significantly affected. MATERIAL AND METHODS Data setWe set a 7-year baseline period before and 5-year follow-up period after 1995 when the earthquake occurred and calculated the number of suicide victims monthly and yearly during these 12 years (1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999). We added up the total number of suicide victims for each month. The differences between the pre-and the post-disaster suicide rates

No abstract

Regulators of G-protein signaling are a family of proteins that negatively regulate the intracellular signaling of G protein-coupled receptors, such as the serotonin receptor. Recent studies have suggested that one of these proteins, the regulator of G-protein signaling 2 (RGS2), plays an important part in anxiety and/or aggressive behavior. To explore the involvement of the RGS2 gene in the vulnerability to suicide, we screened Japanese suicide victims for sequence variations in the RGS2 gene and carried out an association study of RGS2 gene polymorphisms with suicide victims. In the eight identified polymorphisms that were identified by mutation screening, we genotyped four common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the RGS2 gene, and found significant differences in the distribution of the SNP3 (C + 2971G, rs4606) genotypes and alleles of the SNP2 (C-395G, rs2746072) and the SNP3 between completed suicides and the controls. The distribution of the haplotype was also significantly different between the two groups (global po0.0001). Furthermore, RGS2 immunoreactivity significantly increased in the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 9 (BA9)) of the postmortem brain of the suicide subjects. These findings suggest that RGS2 is genetically involved in the biological susceptibility to suicide in the Japanese population.

Suicide has been suggested to involve disturbances in the stress response system and to be related to genetics. The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) has been shown to affect the stress response, and several functional polymorphisms in RAS-related genes have been predicted to alter protein function. We hypothesized that the dysregulation of RAS was involved in suicide, and examined the association between completed suicides and four functional polymorphisms of RAS-related genes: the angiotensinogen M235T, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) insertion(I)/deletion(D), angiotensin type-1 receptor A1166C, and G-protein-beta3 C825T gene polymorphisms. The I allele of the ACE I/D polymorphism was found to be more frequent in completed suicides than in controls (P = 0.014). The I allele was also found to be more frequent in male completed suicides (P = 0.022) than in male controls, while this was not the case in females. These results suggest that the alteration of RAS function caused by the genetic polymorphism is involved in the susceptibility to suicide in males.