Painless Acanthamoeba Keratitis with Normal Vision.

Purpose: To report an atypical case of contact lens-related Acanthamoeba keratitis.

Case Report: A 15-year-old secondary school female student with a history of soft contact lens wear was referred to our hospital by a private general practitioner for management of right eye redness and discomfort for 2 weeks. Upon examination, the best-corrected visual acuity was 20/20 and 20/16 for her right and left eyes, respectively.

Parent-of-Origin Effects of the APOB Gene on Adiposity in Young Adults.

Loci identified in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of cardio-metabolic traits account for a small proportion of the traits' heritability. To date, most association studies have not considered parent-of-origin effects (POEs). Here we report investigation of POEs on adiposity and glycemic traits in young adults.

Maternal genetic variation accounts in part for the associations of maternal size during pregnancy with offspring cardiometabolic risk in adulthood.

Background: Maternal pre-pregnancy body-mass index (ppBMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) are associated with cardiometabolic risk (CMR) traits in the offspring. The extent to which maternal genetic variation accounts for these associations is unknown.

Methods/results: In 1249 mother-offspring pairs recruited from the Jerusalem Perinatal Study, we used archival data to characterize ppBMI and GWG and follow-up data from offspring to assess CMR, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, glucose, insulin, blood pressure, and lipid levels, at an average age of 32.

Inflammation and stress-related candidate genes, plasma interleukin-6 levels, and longevity in older adults.

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is an inflammatory cytokine that influences the development of inflammatory and aging-related disorders and ultimately longevity. In order to study the influence of variants in genes that regulate inflammatory response on IL-6 levels and longevity, we screened a panel of 477 tag SNPs across 87 candidate genes in >5000 older participants from the population-based Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS). Baseline plasma IL-6 concentration was first confirmed as a strong predictor of all-cause mortality.

Genetic variants in multidrug and toxic compound extrusion-1, hMATE1, alter transport function.

hMATE1 (human multidrug and toxin compound extrusion-1; encoded by SLC47A1) is thought to have an important function in the renal and hepatic elimination of drugs, endogenous compounds and environmental toxins. The goals of this study were to identify genetic variants of hMATE1 and to determine their effects on hMATE1 transport function. We identified four synonymous and six nonsynonymous, coding region variants in DNA samples from 272 individuals (68 Caucasians, 68 African Americans, 68 Asian Americans and 68 Mexican Americans).

Common variants in the CRP gene in relation to longevity and cause-specific mortality in older adults: the Cardiovascular Health Study.

Common polymorphisms in the CRP gene are associated with plasma CRP levels in population-based studies, but associations with age-related events are uncertain. A previous study of CRP haplotypes in older adults was broadened to include longevity and cause-specific mortality (all-cause, noncardiovascular (non-CV), and cardiovascular (CV)). Common haplotypes were inferred from four tagSNPs in 4512 whites and five tagSNPs in 812 blacks from the Cardiovascular Health Study, a longitudinal cohort of adults over age 65.

SNP databases and pharmacogenetics: great start, but a long way to go.

With the recent publication of the human genome project there has been an explosion of data available for pharmacogenetic research. Web-based databases containing information on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are readily accessible to researchers, but there has been little comment on their utility. We used seven major international databases to identify SNPs in 74 genes involved in drug pathways.