Suchergebnisse

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) contributes to the increased rates of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder in military personnel and veterans, and it is also associated with the risk for neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. A cross-phenotype high-resolution polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis of persistent post-concussive symptoms (PCS) was conducted in 845 U.S. Army soldiers who sustained TBI during their deployment. We used a prospective longitudinal survey of three brigade combat teams to assess deployment-acquired TBI and persistent physical, cognitive, and emotional PCS. PRS was derived from summary statistics of large genome-wide association studies of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder (MDD); and for years of schooling, college completion, childhood intelligence, infant head circumference (IHC), and adult intracranial volume. Although our study had more than 95% of statistical power to detect moderate-to-large effect sizes, no association was observed with neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, suggesting that persistent PCS does not share genetic components with these traits to a moderate-to-large degree. We observed a significant finding: subjects with high IHC PRS recovered better from cognitive/emotional persistent PCS than the other individuals (R2 = 1.11%; p = 3.37 × 10−3). Enrichment analysis identified two significant Gene Ontology (GO) terms related to this result: GO:0050839∼Cell adhesion molecule binding (p = 8.9 × 10−6) and GO:0050905∼Neuromuscular process (p = 9.8 × 10−5). In summary, our study indicated that the genetic predisposition to persistent PCS after TBI does not have substantial overlap with neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, but mechanisms related to early brain growth may be involved.

Insomnia is a worldwide problem with substantial deleterious health effects. Twin studies have shown a heritable basis for various sleep-related traits, including insomnia, but robust genetic risk variants have just recently begun to be identified. We conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of soldiers in the Army Study To Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (STARRS). GWAS were carried out separately for each ancestral group (EUR, AFR, LAT) using logistic regression for each of the STARRS component studies (including 3,237 cases and 14,414 controls), and then meta-analysis was conducted across studies and ancestral groups. Heritability (SNP-based) for lifetime insomnia disorder was significant (h2g = 0.115, p = 1.78 × 10-4 in EUR). A meta-analysis including three ancestral groups and three study cohorts revealed a genome-wide significant locus on Chr 7 (q11.22) (top SNP rs186736700, OR = 0.607, p = 4.88 × 10-9) and a genome-wide significant gene-based association (p = 7.61 × 10-7) in EUR for RFX3 on Chr 9. Polygenic risk for sleeplessness/insomnia severity in UK Biobank was significantly positively associated with likelihood of insomnia disorder in STARRS. Genetic contributions to insomnia disorder in STARRS were significantly positively correlated with major depressive disorder (rg = 0.44, se = 0.22, p = 0.047) and type 2 diabetes (rg = 0.43, se = 0.20, p = 0.037), and negatively with morningness chronotype (rg = -0.34, se = 0.17, p = 0.039) and subjective well being (rg = -0.59, se = 0.23, p = 0.009) in external datasets. Insomnia associated loci may contribute to the genetic risk underlying a range of health conditions including psychiatric disorders and metabolic disease.

To reveal post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetic risk influences on tissue-specific gene expression, we use brain and non-brain transcriptomic imputation. We impute genetically regulated gene expression (GReX) in 29,539 PTSD cases and 166,145 controls from 70 ancestry-specific cohorts and identify 18 significant GReX-PTSD associations corresponding to specific tissue-gene pairs. The results suggest substantial genetic heterogeneity based on ancestry, cohort type (military versus civilian), and sex. Two study-wide significant PTSD associations are identified in European and military European cohorts; ZNF140 is predicted to be upregulated in whole blood, and SNRNP35 is predicted to be downregulated in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, respectively. In peripheral leukocytes from 175 marines, the observed PTSD differential gene expression correlates with the predicted differences for these individuals, and deployment stress produces glucocorticoid-regulated expression changes that include downregulation of both ZNF140 and SNRNP35. SNRNP35 knockdown in cells validates its functional role in U12-intron splicing. Finally, exogenous glucocorticoids in mice downregulate prefrontal Snrnp35 expression.

To reveal post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetic risk influences on tissue-specific gene expression, we use brain and non-brain transcriptomic imputation. We impute genetically regulated gene expression (GReX) in 29,539 PTSD cases and 166,145 controls from 70 ancestry-specific cohorts and identify 18 significant GReX-PTSD associations corresponding to specific tissue-gene pairs. The results suggest substantial genetic heterogeneity based on ancestry, cohort type (military versus civilian), and sex. Two study-wide significant PTSD associations are identified in European and military European cohorts; ZNF140 is predicted to be upregulated in whole blood, and SNRNP35 is predicted to be downregulated in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, respectively. In peripheral leukocytes from 175 marines, the observed PTSD differential gene expression correlates with the predicted differences for these individuals, and deployment stress produces glucocorticoid-regulated expression changes that include downregulation of both ZNF140 and SNRNP35. SNRNP35 knockdown in cells validates its functional role in U12-intron splicing. Finally, exogenous glucocorticoids in mice downregulate prefrontal Snrnp35 expression.