Depression, Smoking Connected to Neanderthal DNA: Study

A new study found out that depression and bad the habit of smoking were innate into one's personality as recently revealed by Journal Science. This was because of people's DNA, which was connected and inherited from Neanderthal species.

According to News4SA.com, the analysts got evidence that having a few of Neanderthal genes in a person can raise the risk of tobacco addiction, while some can increase or decrease the danger of having depression. This was the result of the recent series of studies of "Neanderthal genetic heritage in modern people."

Tony Capra, an evolutionary geneticist at Vanderbilt University and the senior author of the study, said that researching the DNA of a person can help to give a light to the "biological roots" of some illnesses. They put their attention more in studying Neanderthal genetics, which was first identified in the previous analysis.

Hence, it has been said that the DNA can increase the risk of being depressed and addicted to smoking, but that doesn't mean that having Neanderthal genes will automatically have those conditions. On the contrary, DNA added that these attributes were no use to the modern environment.

In a different study published in American Journal of Human Genetics, they said that Neanderthal DNA was connected to some immune disorders, allergies and asthma. In fact, they even revealed that the subspecies of human in the genus Homo were being linked to a person's psychiatric disorder, blood clotting and addictive behavior.

The researchers just divulged these findings after they analyzed a more than ten thousand of modern people's medical records and genetic histories. "Our main finding is that Neanderthal DNA does influence clinical traits in modern humans," Capra said.

"We discovered associations between Neanderthal DNA and a wide range of traits, including immunological, dermatological, neurological, psychiatric and reproductive diseases." The study made was the first research that compared Neanderthal DNA with a lot of adults' genomes in the European ancestry.