RESEARCH CENTER ON THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF ETHNICITY

尽管在各个领域取得了巨大的进步， 临床神经科学，相对较少的探索已经进行， 确定这些调查结果是否在种族上一致。 什么小数据 这表明，种族之间的巨大差异， 生物治疗（如精神药理学）和精神生物学 与精神疾病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 对少数民族重病患者进行适当治疗和评估 精神病患者。 此外，他们还拥有重要的基础科学 关于“心理生物学标记”的普遍性， 以及它们的病理生理学解释。 为了更好地理解 这些不多但有趣和潜在重要问题的相关性 观察，跨种族差异的性质和程度将是 确定，这种差异背后的机制将是 评估。 为此，我们建议建立一个新的多民族少数民族国家， 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领域。 该中心将是多- 学科性质，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。 这些机制将包括 行政核心（含统计部分）、评估和 受试者招募核心和实验室核心。 三个试点项目 将在此期间进行。 这些项目将探索 以下问题：（1）种族和三环类药物的差异反应 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RBC/血浆锂比（黑人和高加索人）， （3）抑郁症的种族和生物学标志物（黑人、西班牙裔 高加索人）。 除了提供有价值的信息， 临床相关，这些试点项目还将提供数据， 进一步指导我们今后在这方面的研究工作。 该中心的 实验室虽然一开始规模不大，但将成为国家实验室 第一个实验室将主要致力于跨种族研究。 本中心的实验室和其他资源与其他机构共享 研究人员，并与其他研究人员和机构的合作将 升职

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.