Dementia risk scores in diverse populations
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Adiposity and dementia among Chinese adults: longitudinal study in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)
Evidence on the age-dependent association between adiposity and risk of dementia in the Chinese population is unclear. We aim to disentangle the association of mid- and late- life adiposity with subsequent dementia risk in Chinese adults and compare ageing trajectories of adiposity between those with/out dementia.
The role of plasma inflammatory markers in late-life depression and conversion to dementia: a 3-year follow-up study
Late-life depression (LLD) has been linked to increased likelihood of dementia, although mechanisms responsible for this association remain largely unknown. One feature frequently observed in both LLD and dementia is elevated levels of plasma inflammatory markers. The present study aimed to compare the levels of 12 plasma inflammatory markers between older people with LLD and controls, and to explore whether these markers, along with clinical characteristics, can predict dementia in patients with LLD within 3 years of follow-up. Using multiple linear regression with stepwise adjustment, we compared levels of plasma inflammatory markers (IL-1β, IL-1ra, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17a, IL-18, IL-33, TNFα, CD40L, IFN-γ, CCL-2 and CCL-4) between 136 inpatients with LLD (PRODE cohort) and 103 cognitively healthy non-depressed controls (COGNORM cohort). In the PRODE cohort, follow-up data was available for 139 patients (of them 123 had data on baseline plasma inflammatory markers); 36 (25.9%) developed dementia by Year 3 (n = 31 for those with cytokine data). Using Cox proportional hazards regression, we explored whether inflammatory markers and clinical characteristics of LLD (age of onset, treatment response, number of episodes) predicted progression to dementia during follow-up. Levels of IL-1ra, CCL-2, CCL-4, IFN-γ and IL-17a were significantly higher in LLD patients compared to controls in the majority of models. However, none of the inflammatory markers predicted progression from LLD to dementia in the PRODE cohort. Among clinical features, only poor response to treatment significantly predicted higher risk of progression to dementia.
Neuroinflammatory fluid biomarkers in patients with Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic literature review
Neuroinflammation is associated with both early and late stages of the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Fluid biomarkers are gaining significance in clinical practice for diagnosis in presymptomatic stages, monitoring, and disease prognosis. This systematic literature review (SLR) aimed to identify fluid biomarkers for neuroinflammation related to clinical stages across the AD continuum and examined long-term outcomes associated with changes in biomarkers.
Multi-population GWAS detects robust marker associations in a newly established six-rowed winter barley breeding program
Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a powerful tool for identifying marker-trait associations that can accelerate breeding progress. Yet, its power is typically constrained in newly established breeding programs where large phenotypic and genotypic datasets have not yet accumulated. Expanding the dataset by inclusion of data from well-established breeding programs with many years of phenotyping and genotyping can potentially address this problem. In this study we performed single- and multi-population GWAS on heading date and lodging in four barley breeding populations with varying combinations of row-type and growth habit. Focusing on a recently established 6-rowed winter (6RW) barley population, single-population GWAS hardly resulted in any significant associations. Nevertheless, the combination of the 6RW target population with other populations in multi-population GWAS detected four and five robust candidate quantitative trait loci for heading date and lodging, respectively. Of these, three remained undetected when analysing the combined populations individually. Further, multi-population GWAS detected markers capturing a larger proportion of genetic variance in 6RW. For multi-population GWAS, we compared the findings of a univariate model (MP1) with a multivariate model (MP2). While both models surpassed single-population GWAS in power, MP2 offered a significant advantage by having more realistic assumptions while pointing towards robust marker-trait associations across populations. Additionally, comparisons of GWAS findings for MP2 and single-population GWAS allowed identification of population-specific loci. In conclusion, our study presents a promising approach to kick-start genomics-based breeding in newly established breeding populations.
Too big to purge: persistence of deleterious Mutations in Island populations of the European Barn Owl (Tyto alba)
A key aspect of assessing the risk of extinction/extirpation for a particular wild species or population is the status of inbreeding, but the origin of inbreeding and the current mutational load are also two crucial factors to consider when determining survival probability of a population. In this study, we used samples from 502 barn owls from continental and island populations across Europe, with the aim of quantifying and comparing the level of inbreeding between populations with differing demographic histories. In addition to comparing inbreeding status, we determined whether inbreeding is due to non-random mating or high co-ancestry within the population. We show that islands have higher levels of inbreeding than continental populations, and that this is mainly due to small effective population sizes rather than recent consanguineous mating. We assess the probability that a region is autozygous along the genome and show that this probability decreased as the number of genes present in that region increased. Finally, we looked for evidence of reduced selection efficiency and purging in island populations. Among island populations, we found an increase in numbers of both neutral and deleterious minor alleles, possibly as a result of drift and decreased selection efficiency but we found no evidence of purging.
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