Predisposition Footprints in the Somatic Genome of Wilms tumour
Publication: Cancer Discovery
Publication: Cancer Discovery
Publication: Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Michal M Graczyk, Rudolf N Cardinal, Tsen Vei Lim, Salvatore Nigro, Elijah Mak, Karen D Ersche
A preference for sooner-smaller over later-larger rewards, known as delay discounting, is a candidate transdiagnostic marker of waiting impulsivity and a research domain criterion. While abnormal discounting rates have been associated with many psychiatric diagnoses and abnormal brain structure, the underlying neuropsychological processes remain largely unknown. Here, we deconstruct delay discounting into choice and rate processes by testing different computational models and investigate their associations with white matter tracts.
Publication: Nature
Alexandra Strauss, Peter Swann, Stacey L. Kigar, Rafailia Christou, Natalia Savinykh Yarkoni, Lorinda Turner, Alexander G. Murley, Leonidas Chouliaras, Noah Shapiro, Nicholas J. Ashton, George Savulich, W. Richard Bevan-Jones, Ajenthan Surendranthan, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, John T. O’Brien, James B. Rowe & Maura Malpetti
29 October 2024
Summary
The innate immune system plays an integral role in the progression of many neurodegenerative diseases. In addition to central innate immune cells (e.g., microglia), peripheral innate immune cells (e.g., blood monocytes, natural killer cells, and dendritic cells) may also differ in these conditions. However, the characterization of peripheral innate immune cell types across different neurodegenerative diseases remains incomplete. This study aimed to characterize peripheral innate immune profiles using flow cytometry for immunophenotyping of peripheral blood mononuclear cells.
Publication: Journal of Hospital Infection
Rebecca C. Brock, Robert J.B. Goudie, Christine Peters, Rachel Thaxter, Theodore Gouliouris, Christopher J.R. Illingworth, Andrew Conway Morris, Clive B. Beggs, Matthew Butler, Victoria L. Keevil
5 October 2024
Summary
Researchers have been leading the Addenbrookes Air Disinfection Study (AAirDS) looking at whether Air Cleaning Units in hospital wards reduce hospital-acquired infections, particularly COVID-19.
Publication: Brain
Catarina Rua, Betty Raman, Christopher T Rodgers, Virginia F J Newcombe, Anne Manktelow, Doris A Chatfield, Stephen J Sawcer, Joanne G Outtrim, Victoria C Lupson, Emmanuel A Stamatakis, Guy B Williams, William T Clarke, Lin Qiu, Martyn Ezra, Rory McDonald, Stuart Clare, Mark Cassar, Stefan Neubauer, Karen D Ersche, Edward T Bullmore, David K Menon, Kyle Pattinson, James B Rowe
08 October 2024
Summary
Damage to the brainstem – the brain’s ‘control centre’ – is behind long-lasting physical and psychiatric effects of severe Covid-19 infection, a study suggests.
Using ultra-high-resolution scanners that can see the living brain in fine detail, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and supported by NIHR Cambridge and Oxford BRCs, were able to observe the damaging effects Covid-19 can have on the brain. Read the full news story.
Aviva Stafford, Sheri Oduola, Sarah Reeve
Published online 10 September 2024
Publication: BMC Medicine
Chen S, Underwood BR, Cardinal RN, Chen X, Chen S, Amin J, Jin H, Mueller C, Yan LL, Brayne C, Kuper H
26 June 2024
Summary
This was an analysis of pre-existing data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, examining changes over time in risk factors for dementia that have the potential to be altered (such as hypertension, obesity, hearing loss, and social isolation).
Publication: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Kaminska J, Hodgekins J, Lewis JR, Cardinal RN, Oduola S
09 September 2024
Summary
This study examined de-identified NHS data about people having a first episode of psychosis, and looked at how the psychosis began (abruptly or slowly), how long it went untreated, and factors including rural or urban residence. Among such people, some factors differed between rural and urban settings, e.g. employment and living with family. A slow onset of psychosis was associated with a longer time untreated, but rural/urban differences in “time untreated” were not found.
Publication: Nature Communications
Samantha Ip, Teri-Louise North, Fatemeh Torabi, Yangfan Li, Hoda Abbasizanjani, Ashley Akbari, Elsie Horne, Rachel Denholm, Spencer Keene, Spiros Denaxas, Amitava Banerjee, Kamlesh Khunti, Cathie Sudlow, William N. Whiteley, Jonathan A. C. Sterne, Angela M. Wood, Venexia Walker, the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium & the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing COVID-19 National Core Study
31 July 2024
Summary
A new study has found heart attacks and strokes were lower after COVID-19 vaccination than before or without vaccination.
Publication: American Journal of Human Genetics
Thomas Vanderstichele, Katie L. Burnham, Niek de Klein, Michael Inouye, Dirk S. Paul, Emma E. Davenport et al
24 July 2024
Gene misexpression is the aberrant transcription of a gene in a context where it is usually inactive. Despite its known pathological consequences in specific rare diseases, we have a limited understanding of its wider prevalence and mechanisms in humans. To address this, we analyzed gene misexpression in 4,568 whole-blood bulk RNA sequencing samples from INTERVAL study blood donors.
We found that while individual misexpression events occur rarely, in aggregate they were found in almost all samples and a third of inactive protein-coding genes. Using 2,821 paired whole-genome and RNA sequencing samples, we identified that misexpression events are enriched in cis for rare structural variants. We established putative mechanisms through which a subset of SVs lead to gene misexpression, including transcriptional readthrough, transcript fusions, and gene inversion. Overall, we develop misexpression as a type of transcriptomic outlier analysis and extend our understanding of the variety of mechanisms by which genetic variants can influence gene expression.