Posts in Category ‘News’

First EMIF-AD genome-wide association study published

22. November 2020

This month the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) to emerge from the EMIF-AD MBD project was published today in the journal Translational Psychiatry. The paper describes the results of genome-wide genetic association analyses on a total of 16 Alzheimer’s disease biomarker traits (most derived from cerebrospinal fluid) in 931 participants of the European Medical Information Framework Alzheimer’s Disease Multimodal Biomarker Discovery (EMIF-AD MBD). The study was funded by the EU’s EMIF program and designed and executed by the LIGA team in conjunction with a large number of international collaborators. A preprint of the m.s. had been posted earlier on bioRxiv prior to initiating the peer-review process. The study represents a detailed first account of GWAS analyses on CSF-Aβ and -tau-related traits in the EMIF-AD MBD dataset and sets the stage for genome-wide analyses of other AD-relevant clinical outcomes ascertained in this unique dataset.

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Paper on genetic risk scores in Parkinson’s disease

1. October 2020

This month, a new paper was published assessing the genetic overlap between the occurrence of hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. To this end, genome-wide genotyping data on two population-based cohorts was used to build so called polygenic risk scores based on previously published genome-wide association studies. Genotype data for one of these cohorts was generated by the LIGA team and contributed to this international effort led by long-standing LIGA collaborator Prof. Beate Ritz at UCLA, USA. Interestingly, the strongest genetic links were observed with markers for Alzheimer’s but less so for schizophrenia suggesting that mechanisms for hallucinations in Parkinson’s may in part be driven by the same genetic architecture that leads to cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s. The study was published in the journal Neurology Genetics with Drs. Valerija Dobricic, Lars Bertram, and Christina M. Lill as LIGA co-authors.

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