Publications by authors named "Alena Stancakova"

Article Synopsis
  • Genome-wide association studies have found numerous genetic loci linked to glycemic traits, but connecting these loci to specific genes and biological pathways remains a challenge.
  • Researchers conducted meta-analyses of exome-array studies across four glycemic traits, analyzing data from over 144,000 participants, which led to the identification of coding variant associations in more than 60 genes.
  • The study revealed significant pathways related to insulin secretion, zinc transport, and fatty acid metabolism, enhancing understanding of glycemic regulation and making data available for further research.
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Article Synopsis
  • Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a complex disease influenced by various genetic factors and molecular mechanisms that vary by cell type and ancestry.
  • In a large study involving over 2.5 million individuals, researchers identified 1,289 significant genetic associations linked to T2D, including 145 new loci not previously reported.
  • The study categorized T2D signals into eight distinct clusters based on their connections to cardiometabolic traits and showed that these genetic profiles are linked to vascular complications, emphasizing the role of obesity-related processes across different ancestry groups.
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Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a heterogeneous disease that develops through diverse pathophysiological processes. To characterise the genetic contribution to these processes across ancestry groups, we aggregate genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from 2,535,601 individuals (39.7% non-European ancestry), including 428,452 T2D cases.

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We assembled an ancestrally diverse collection of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in 180,834 affected individuals and 1,159,055 controls (48.9% non-European descent) through the Diabetes Meta-Analysis of Trans-Ethnic association studies (DIAMANTE) Consortium. Multi-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis identified 237 loci attaining stringent genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10), which were delineated to 338 distinct association signals.

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In many species, the offspring of related parents suffer reduced reproductive success, a phenomenon known as inbreeding depression. In humans, the importance of this effect has remained unclear, partly because reproduction between close relatives is both rare and frequently associated with confounding social factors. Here, using genomic inbreeding coefficients (F) for >1.

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Article Synopsis
  • Excessive alcohol consumption is a leading cause of death and disability globally, and it is influenced by genetic factors.
  • A meta-analysis was conducted on data from 480,842 individuals of European descent to explore the genetic links to alcohol intake, identifying 46 new common genetic locations (loci).
  • The findings reveal genetic pathways related to alcohol consumption, potentially linking them to neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia.
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Elevated blood pressure (BP), a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality, is influenced by both genetic and lifestyle factors. Cigarette smoking is one such lifestyle factor. Across five ancestries, we performed a genome-wide gene-smoking interaction study of mean arterial pressure (MAP) and pulse pressure (PP) in 129 913 individuals in stage 1 and follow-up analysis in 480 178 additional individuals in stage 2.

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Article Synopsis
  • Smoking affects levels of good and bad cholesterol and fat in the blood, but we don't know if genetics play a role in how smoking influences these levels.
  • Researchers studied a lot of people (over 133,000) to see if genes and smoking together affect cholesterol and triglycerides, finding 13 new gene locations related to these fats.
  • It's important to include different groups of people in research, especially when looking at how lifestyle choices like smoking interact with genes, to discover new things.
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Several amino acids (AAs) have been shown to be associated with insulin resistance and increased risk of type 2 diabetes, but no previous studies have investigated the association of AAs with insulin secretion in a longitudinal setting. Our study included 5,181 participants of the cross-sectional METabolic Syndrome In Men (METSIM) study having metabolomics data on 20 AAs. A total of 4,851 had a 7.

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Background: Lean body mass (LM) plays an important role in mobility and metabolic function. We previously identified five loci associated with LM adjusted for fat mass in kilograms. Such an adjustment may reduce the power to identify genetic signals having an association with both lean mass and fat mass.

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A person's lipid profile is influenced by genetic variants and alcohol consumption, but the contribution of interactions between these exposures has not been studied. We therefore incorporated gene-alcohol interactions into a multiancestry genome-wide association study of levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides. We included 45 studies in stage 1 (genome-wide discovery) and 66 studies in stage 2 (focused follow-up), for a total of 394,584 individuals from 5 ancestry groups.

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Tobacco and alcohol use are leading causes of mortality that influence risk for many complex diseases and disorders. They are heritable and etiologically related behaviors that have been resistant to gene discovery efforts. In sample sizes up to 1.

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Objective: Apolipoprotein E () 4 allele is a well-established risk factor in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we assessed the effects of polymorphism on cardiovascular, metabolic, and inflammation-related parameters in population-based cohorts.

Methods: Association of cardiovascular, metabolic, and inflammation-related parameters with the polymorphism in a large Finnish Metabolic Syndrome in Men (METSIM) cohort and Finnish Geriatric Intervention study to prevent cognitive impairment and disability (FINGER) were investigated.

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We expanded GWAS discovery for type 2 diabetes (T2D) by combining data from 898,130 European-descent individuals (9% cases), after imputation to high-density reference panels. With these data, we (i) extend the inventory of T2D-risk variants (243 loci, 135 newly implicated in T2D predisposition, comprising 403 distinct association signals); (ii) enrich discovery of lower-frequency risk alleles (80 index variants with minor allele frequency <5%, 14 with estimated allelic odds ratio >2); (iii) substantially improve fine-mapping of causal variants (at 51 signals, one variant accounted for >80% posterior probability of association (PPA)); (iv) extend fine-mapping through integration of tissue-specific epigenomic information (islet regulatory annotations extend the number of variants with PPA >80% to 73); (v) highlight validated therapeutic targets (18 genes with associations attributable to coding variants); and (vi) demonstrate enhanced potential for clinical translation (genome-wide chip heritability explains 18% of T2D risk; individuals in the extremes of a T2D polygenic risk score differ more than ninefold in prevalence).

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Heavy alcohol consumption is an established risk factor for hypertension; the mechanism by which alcohol consumption impact blood pressure (BP) regulation remains unknown. We hypothesized that a genome-wide association study accounting for gene-alcohol consumption interaction for BP might identify additional BP loci and contribute to the understanding of alcohol-related BP regulation. We conducted a large two-stage investigation incorporating joint testing of main genetic effects and single nucleotide variant (SNV)-alcohol consumption interactions.

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We aggregated coding variant data for 81,412 type 2 diabetes cases and 370,832 controls of diverse ancestry, identifying 40 coding variant association signals (P < 2.2 × 10); of these, 16 map outside known risk-associated loci. We make two important observations.

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Comprehensive metabolite profiling captures many highly heritable traits, including amino acid levels, which are potentially sensitive biomarkers for disease pathogenesis. To better understand the contribution of genetic variation to amino acid levels, we performed single variant and gene-based tests of association between nine serum amino acids (alanine, glutamine, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and valine) and 16.6 million genotyped and imputed variants in 8545 non-diabetic Finnish men from the METabolic Syndrome In Men (METSIM) study with replication in Northern Finland Birth Cohort (NFBC1966).

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Genome-wide association analysis advanced understanding of blood pressure (BP), a major risk factor for vascular conditions such as coronary heart disease and stroke. Accounting for smoking behavior may help identify BP loci and extend our knowledge of its genetic architecture. We performed genome-wide association meta-analyses of systolic and diastolic BP incorporating gene-smoking interactions in 610,091 individuals.

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To investigate the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes (T2D) to high resolution, the GoT2D and T2D-GENES consortia catalogued variation from whole-genome sequencing of 2,657 European individuals and exome sequencing of 12,940 individuals of multiple ancestries. Over 27M SNPs, indels, and structural variants were identified, including 99% of low-frequency (minor allele frequency [MAF] 0.1-5%) non-coding variants in the whole-genome sequenced individuals and 99.

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Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) metabolite, 3-Hydroxyisobutyric acid (3-HIB) has been identified as a secreted mediator of endothelial cell fatty acid transport and insulin resistance (IR) using animal models. To identify if 3-HIB is a marker of human IR and future risk of developing Type 2 diabetes (T2D), we measured plasma levels of 3-HIB and associated metabolites in around 10,000 extensively phenotyped individuals. The levels of 3-HIB were increased in obesity but not robustly associated with degree of IR after adjusting for BMI.

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Rare fully penetrant mutations in are an established cause of monogenic disorders of glucose metabolism. Recently, a novel partial loss-of-function coding variant (p.Pro50Thr) was identified that is nearly specific to Finns (frequency 1.

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Background: Genome-wide association studies have recently identified >400 loci that harbor DNA sequence variants that influence blood pressure (BP). Our earlier studies identified and validated 56 single nucleotide variants (SNVs) associated with BP from meta-analyses of exome chip genotype data. An additional 100 variants yielded suggestive evidence of association.

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