Publications by authors named "Nancy Pedersen"
Beneficial associations between higher fruit and vegetable intakes and risk of depression appear to exist but few studies have focused on adults aged 45 + years and the potential that associations are due to residual confounding has not been tested. This longitudinal study of twins (n = 3483, age 45-90 years) from Australia, Denmark, Sweden and USA, assessed the associations between baseline fruit/vegetable intake and depressive symptoms over 5-11 years using linear mixed effects models. Intakes from food frequency questionnaires were trichotomized.
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- - This study is the first large-scale examination of rare copy number variants (CNVs) in anorexia nervosa (AN), involving data from 7,414 AN cases and 5,044 controls to explore their potential genetic links to the disorder.
- - The researchers investigated both well-known syndromic CNVs and those associated with other diseases but found no significant links between these variants and AN; however, they identified 21 potential CNV regions that may play a role in AN risk, particularly in areas related to metabolic and neurodevelopmental factors.
- - Ultimately, the findings suggest that rare CNVs have a limited impact on the development of AN, aligning it with other psychiatric disorders like bipolar disorder, and indicate that
Current genetic research on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) supports contributions to risk specifically from common single nucleotide variants (SNVs), along with rare coding SNVs and small insertion-deletions (indels). The contribution to OCD risk from rare copy number variants (CNVs), however, has not been formally assessed at a similar scale. Here we describe an analysis of rare CNVs called from genotype array data in 2248 deeply phenotyped OCD cases and 3608 unaffected controls from Sweden and Norway.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe deliberate practice (DP) theory claims that expertise essentially reflects the accumulated amount of deliberate practice, and that with sufficient practice, genetic influences on expertise will be bypassed. Thus, a core prediction of the DP theory is that genetic effects on performance decrease as a function of practice. Here, we test this prediction using music as a model domain.
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- The study investigates the link between inflammatory markers in blood and the risk of perinatal depression (PND) in women, a significant health issue affecting many during childbirth.
- This prospective cohort study included 4,483 women and found that a higher platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) increases the risk of PND, while a higher lymphocyte count decreases it, with these relationships being stronger for postpartum depression.
- The findings highlight the potential of using pre-pregnancy inflammatory markers to predict the risk of PND, suggesting a need for further research into the biological mechanisms involved.
Background: Obesity, assessed by body mass index (BMI), is an established risk factor for 13 cancers. We aimed to identify further potential obesity-related cancers and to quantify their association with BMI relative to that of established obesity-related cancers.
Methods: Using Cox regression models on 4,142,349 individuals in Sweden (mean age 27.
Article Synopsis
- The study explores how copy number variations (CNVs) affect the development of Parkinson's disease (PD), aiming to identify new genetic mechanisms linked to sporadic cases of the disease.
- Utilizing data from over 11,000 PD patients and nearly 9,000 controls, the researchers discovered 14 significant CNV loci associated with PD, including various gene duplications and deletions.
- The research highlights a higher prevalence of CNVs in specific PD-related genes among patients and suggests that certain CNVs, especially those involving the gene, may lead to earlier onset of the disease in early-onset PD cases.
Article Synopsis
- Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are heritable psychiatric conditions; this study aims to explore how genetic factors, specifically polygenic risk scores (PRS), influence psychosis among twins.* -
- Using data from the Schizophrenia and Bipolar Twin Study and the Swedish Twin Registry, researchers analyzed twin pairs to see if those with higher PRS had increased likelihood of psychosis.* -
- The final analysis included over 300 twin pairs, assessing psychosis through clinical interviews, with the goal of determining the heritability of psychosis and understanding genetic overlap between the two disorders.*
Background: Premenstrual disorders (PMDs) affect women's quality of life, yet the impact on romantic relationships remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the association between severe PMDs and relationship disruption and initiation.
Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 15,606 women during 2009-2021 in Sweden.
Purpose: We investigated time trends of the obesity-mortality association, accounting for age, sex, and cause-specific deaths.
Methods: We analysed pooled nationwide data in Sweden for 3,472,310 individuals aged 17-39 years at baseline in 1963-2016. Cox regression and flexible parametric survival models investigated BMI-mortality associations in sub-groups of sex and baseline calendar years (men: <1975, 1975-1985, ≥1985 and women: <1985, 1985-1994, ≥1995).
Purpose: The Obesity and Disease Development Sweden (ODDS) study was designed to create a large cohort to study body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and changes in weight and WC, in relation to morbidity and mortality.
Participants: ODDS includes 4 295 859 individuals, 2 165 048 men and 2 130 811 women, in Swedish cohorts and national registers with information on weight assessed once (2 555 098 individuals) or more (1 740 761 individuals), in total constituting 7 733 901 weight assessments at the age of 17-103 years in 1963-2020 (recalled weight as of 1911). Information on WC is available in 152 089 men and 212 658 women, out of whom 108 795 have repeated information on WC (in total 512 273 assessments).
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and Parkinson's disease (PD) using a method called Mendelian randomization to determine if higher genetically predicted BMI is linked to a lower incidence of PD.
- Researchers analyzed genetic data from large groups of individuals, including over 800,000 for BMI and nearly 29,000 for PD, focusing on factors like age, disease duration, and gender to examine the associations.
- Results indicated an inverse relationship between genetically predicted BMI and PD, particularly among younger participants and women, suggesting that lower BMI may be associated with a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease.
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- Scientists looked at the timing of when girls start their periods (called menarche) and how it can affect their health later in life.
- They studied about 800,000 women and found over a thousand genetic signals that influence when menstruation starts.
- Some women have a much higher chance of starting their periods too early or too late based on their genetic makeup, suggesting that genes play a big role in this process!
Diabetes mellitus type 2 (T2D) is associated with accelerated biological aging and the increased risk of onset of other age-related diseases. Epigenetic changes in DNA methylation levels have been found to serve as reliable biomarkers for biological aging. This study explores the relationship between various epigenetic biomarkers of aging and diabetes risk using longitudinal data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividual sensitivity to environmental exposures may be genetically influenced. This genotype-by-environment interplay implies differences in phenotypic variance across genotypes. However, environmental sensitivity genetic variants have proven challenging to detect.
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- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) affects about 1% of people and has a strong genetic component, but previous studies have not fully explained its genetic causes or biological mechanisms.
- A large genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyzed data from over 53,000 OCD cases and over 2 million control participants, identifying 30 significant genetic markers related to OCD and suggesting a 6.7% heritability from SNPs.
- The research also found 249 candidate risk genes linked to OCD, particularly in specific brain regions, and showed genetic correlations with various psychiatric disorders, laying the groundwork for further studies and potential treatments.
Objectives: Subjective health (SH) is not just an indicator of physical health, but also reflects active cognitive processing of information about one's own health and has been associated with emotional health measures, such as neuroticism and depression. Behavior genetic approaches investigate the genetic architecture of SH, that is, genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in SH and associations with potential components such as physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Previous twin analyses have been limited by sex, sample size, age range, and focus on single covariates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) susceptibility is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Previous findings suggest DNA methylation as a potential mechanism in T2D pathogenesis and progression.
Methods: We profiled DNA methylation in 248 blood samples from participants of European ancestry from 7 twin cohorts using a methylation sequencing platform targeting regulatory genomic regions encompassing 2,048,698 CpG sites.
Article Synopsis
- Four GWAS studies on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been conducted, showing a SNP-heritability of 28% but revealing only one significant SNP so far.
- A new meta-analysis significantly increased the sample size to analyze 37,015 OCD cases against 948,616 controls, identifying 15 independent genome-wide significant loci, 14 of which were novel.
- The research highlighted genetic correlations between OCD and various psychiatric disorders, while also mapping the genetic basis and biological pathways associated with OCD susceptibility.
Antihypertensive, lipid-lowering, and blood glucose-lowering drugs have slowed down the aging process in animal models. In humans, studies are limited, have short follow-up times, and show mixed results. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate the effects of commonly used medications on functional aging, cognitive function, and frailty.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpigenetics plays an important role in the aging process, but it is unclear whether epigenetic factors also influence frailty, an age-related state of physiological decline. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies in four samples drawn from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA) and the Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins (LSADT) to explore the association between DNA methylation and frailty. Frailty was defined using the frailty index (FI), and DNA methylation levels were measured in whole blood using Illumina's Infinium HumanMethylation450K and MethylationEPIC arrays.
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- - Current research on OCD suggests that rare copy number variants (CNVs) may play a significant role in increasing risk, particularly large CNVs that overlap with protein-coding regions.
- - An analysis involving over 2,200 OCD cases and 3,600 controls showed that OCD cases had a higher incidence of these large CNVs, especially deletions affecting crucial genes.
- - Findings indicated that certain genetic variations were linked with comorbid autism in OCD patients and poorer treatment response, highlighting the need for further investigation into rare genetic factors in OCD.
Introduction: Dementia predicts increased mortality. We used case-control and co-twin control models to investigate genetic and shared environmental influences on this association.
Methods: Case-control design, including 987 twins with dementia and 2938 age- and sex-matched controls in the Swedish Twin Registry.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers conducted a study to identify genetic factors influencing the likelihood of women giving birth to spontaneous dizygotic (DZ) twins, uncovering four new loci: GNRH1, FSHR, ZFPM1, and IPO8, alongside previously known loci FSHB and SMAD3.
- * The study involved a large genome-wide association meta-analysis (GWAMA) of over 700,000 participants, focusing on mothers of spontaneous DZ twins and their offspring, excluding cases from assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs).
- * Findings indicate that the newly identified loci play roles in female reproduction, and significant correlations were found with various reproductive traits and body size, suggesting evolutionary pressures against DZ twinning in humans.