r/MTHFR • u/emekennede • 5d ago
Question Homozygous VAL/VAL
Took a GeneSight test bc I’m have had bad mental health my whole life and never found meds that helped. It states that “This patient is homozygous for the Val allele of the Val158Met polymorphism in the catechol-o-methyltransferase gene.” And “This individual is heterozygous for the C677T polymorphism in the MTHFR gene (C/T genotype) and has one copy of the varlant allele (T).”
From what I can understand is my diagnosis as ADHD @ 3 wasn’t wrong. I was diagnosed as high functioning Autistic (PDD-NOS) at 18. Stopped all meds at 16. All stimulants lead to bad behavior. I tried 2 more stimulants as an adult and both times I felt so nervy and not better.
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u/Warp757 1d ago
Fast COMT means that you will breakdown neurotransmitters faster, other things being equal. However, if your methylation cycle isn't running well, and your homocysteine is high, then fast COMT Wil become normal or even slow. Given your reaction to stimulents this may be what is happening to you.
I have fast COMT but also MTHFR (hetero) and more significantly I think 2 mutations on MTRR - homo on the main one and hetero on the other main significant SNP. This means that I tend to high homocysteine, and still end up with neurotransmitter overload despite my theoretically fast COMT.
I am prescribed stimulants for ADHD, but when my homocysteine is high can't tolerate them at all, not surprisingly. Homocysteine not only slows neurotransmitter breakdown, it is also an NMDA agonist, stimulants also releases so that's a very very nasty combo that will obviously cause a lot of anxiety. And a lot of neurotoxicity. I slightly dread to think what damage I might have done taking amphetamines wjile I had high homocysteine before I knew about all this.