NIMH Ranks Dietz’s Research among Top 5 Breakthroughs of 2011
David Dietz, PhD
Published January 12, 2012 This content is archived.
Research conducted by David Dietz, PhD, on paternal transmission of depression to offspring has been named one of the top five findings of 2011 by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
NIMH Director Cites Study in Epigenomics Commentary
In his blog post about the NIMH’s top ten research advances of 2011, director Thomas R. Insel, MD, references Dietz’s research in the fifth entry, titled “Epigenomics: How Experience Alters Behavior.”
An assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology, Dietz is lead author of a study whose preliminary findings indicate that depression in families is passed on to the next generation primarily through behavioral interactions between parents and offspring, not through genetics.
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published in the Journal of Biological Psychiatry in an article titled Paternal Transmission of Stress-Induced Pathologies.
“This recognition speaks to the quality and impact of Dr. Dietz’s research,” says Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, chair and professor of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. “We are proud to have him as a faculty member at UB and look forward to his future discoveries.”
Dietz and his co-authors at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Utrecht University in the Netherlands presented their findings at the annual meetings of the Society for Neuroscience in November and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in December.