Publications by authors named "Q Helmer"

Substantial genetic correlations have been reported across psychiatric disorders and numerous cross-disorder genetic variants have been detected. To identify the genetic variants underlying general psychopathology in childhood, we performed a genome-wide association study using a total psychiatric problem score. We analyzed 6,844,199 common SNPs in 38,418 school-aged children from 20 population-based cohorts participating in the EAGLE consortium.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

By treating the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as a natural experiment, we examine the influence of substantial environmental change (i.e., lockdown measures) on individual differences in quality of life (QoL) in the Netherlands.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In recent years, evidence has accumulated with regard to the ubiquity of pleiotropy across the genome, and shared genetic etiology is thought to play a large role in the widespread comorbidity among psychiatric disorders and risk factors. Recent methods investigate pleiotropy by estimating genetic correlation from genome-wide association summary statistics. More comprehensive estimates can be derived from the known relatedness between genetic relatives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study aimed to identify genetic risk factors influencing the age at which allergic diseases like asthma, hay fever, and eczema first appear in individuals of European ancestry.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 117,130 participants in the UK Biobank, discovering 50 genetic variants linked to the age of onset, with many variants influencing multiple allergic conditions.
  • The findings revealed that early-onset individuals tend to carry more allergy risk alleles, suggesting that genetic factors may differ between those with early and late onset allergic diseases, highlighting unique underlying biological mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mood disorder, with a heritability of around 34%. Molecular genetic studies made significant progress and identified genetic markers associated with the risk of MDD; however, progress is slowed down by substantial heterogeneity as MDD is assessed differently across international cohorts. Here, we used a standardized online approach to measure MDD in multiple cohorts in the Netherlands and evaluated whether this approach can be used in epidemiological and genetic association studies of depression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF