RESEARCH CENTER ON THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF ETHNICITY

尽管在各个领域取得了长足的进步， 临床神经科学，相对较少的探索对 确定这些发现在种族上是否一致。多么少的数据啊 它们确实存在，这表明在对 生物治疗(如精神药理学)和精神生物学 与精神障碍相关的过程确实会发生。这些发现 具有重要的临床意义，特别是与 少数民族重症患者的适当治疗和评估 精神病患者。此外，它们还拥有重要的基础科学 关于“心理生物学标记”的普遍性的后果 以及他们的病理生理解释。为了更好地了解 这些不多但有趣和潜在重要的相关性 观察到，跨种族差异的性质和程度将是 这种差异背后的机制将是 评估过了。为此，我们建议建立一个新的多民族少数民族 心理健康研究中心，其目标是系统地研究这些 重要的和基本上未开发的地区。该中心将是多个 在学科性质上，将包括不同领域的研究人员，如 精神病学、少数民族研究、生物精神病学和药理学。 将建立三个核心设施。这些将包括 行政核心(含统计部分)、评估和 学科招聘核心和实验室核心。三个试点项目 将在此授权期内执行。这些项目将探索 以下问题：(1)种族和对三环的不同反应 抗抑郁药(黑人、西班牙裔和高加索人)；(2)种族、锂 药代动力学和红细胞/血浆锂比率(黑人和高加索人)， 以及(3)抑郁症的种族和生物标志(黑人、西班牙裔 高加索人)。除了提供有价值的信息外，可能 这些试点项目还将提供与临床相关的数据， 进一步指导我们未来在这一领域的研究工作。该中心的 实验室，虽然一开始规模不大，但将成为国家 第一个实验室，将主要致力于跨种族研究。 本中心实验室及其他资源的共享 研究人员，以及与其他研究人员和机构的合作将 被提拔。

In spite of the great strides that have been made in various areas of clinical neuroscience, relatively little exploration has been performed to determine if such findings are ethnically consistent. What little data which do exist suggest that drastic ethnic differences in responses to biological treatment (such as psychopharmacology) and in psychobiologic processes associated with psychiatric disorders do occur. These findings have important clinical implications, particularly in relation to appropriate treatment and assessment of severely ill ethnic minority psychiatric patients. Furthermore, they also have important basic science ramifications, in regard to the universality of "psychobiological markers" and their pathophysiologic interpretations. In order to better understand the relevance of these scant but interesting and potentially important observations, the nature and extent of cross-ethnic dissimilarities will be ascertained, and the mechanisms underlying such differences will be assessed. To do so, we propose to establish a new multi-ethnic Minority Mental Health Research Center whose goals are to systematically study these vital and essentially unexplored areas. This Center will be multi- disciplinary in nature, will include researchers in diverse areas, such as psychiatry, minority research, biological psychiatry, and pharmacology. Three Core Facilities will be established. These will include the Administrative Core (with a statistical component), the Assessment and Subject Recruitment Core, and the Laboratory Core. Three pilot projects will be performed during this granting period. These projects will explore the following issues: (1) Ethnicity and differential responses to tricyclic antidepressants (Blacks, Hispanics, and Caucasians); (2) Ethnicity, lithium pharmacokinetics, and the RBC/plasma lithium ratio (Blacks and Caucasians), and (3) Ethnicity and biological markers in depression (Blacks, Hispanics and Caucasians). Besides providing valuable information that may be clinically relevant, these pilot projects will also provide data that will further guide our future research efforts in this area. The Center's Laboratory, although of modest size in the beginning, will be the National first Laboratory that will be primarily devoted to cross-ethnic research. The sharing of the Laboratory and other resources of this Center with other researchers, and collaboration with other researchers and institutions will be promoted.