Publications by authors named "Roddy Walsh"

Article Synopsis
  • * A large study involving nearly 10,000 DCM cases and close to a million controls identified 70 significant genetic locations linked to the disease, revealing the importance of heart muscle cells in its development.
  • * The research also indicates that factors like higher body weight and blood pressure may contribute to DCM, and genetic risk scores can help predict the condition across different populations.
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Article Synopsis
  • Brugada syndrome (BrS) is a hereditary cardiac disorder linked to sudden death in young adults, particularly prevalent in Southeast Asia, with certain genetic variants associated with the condition.
  • Researchers conducted genome sequencing on individuals with BrS and matched controls in Thailand to find rare noncoding variants that are more common in BrS patients.
  • A specific rare variant was identified that disrupts a transcription factor binding site, causing reduced gene expression and reduced sodium current in heart cells, contributing to the high prevalence of BrS in the region and identifying at-risk individuals.
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Large-scale sequencing has enabled unparalleled opportunities to investigate the role of rare coding variation in human phenotypic variability. Here, we present a pan-ancestry analysis of sequencing data from three large biobanks, including the All of Us research program. Using mixed-effects models, we performed gene-based rare variant testing for 601 diseases across 748,879 individuals, including 155,236 with ancestry dissimilar to European.

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Background: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is an inherited cardiac condition affecting ~1 in 500 and exhibits marked genetic heterogeneity. Previously published in 2019, 57 HCM-associated genes were curated providing the first systematic evaluation of gene-disease validity. Here we report work by the ClinGen Hereditary Cardiovascular Disorders Gene Curation Expert Panel (HCVD-GCEP) to reappraise the clinical validity of previously curated and new putative HCM genes.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on inherited heart diseases and the effectiveness of cardiac gene panel testing over an 18-year period in Ireland, emphasizing the need for diagnosing familial pathogenic variants to inform at-risk relatives.
  • The initial diagnostic yield of pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants was found to be 28.4%, which increased to 33.1% after re-evaluating cases with uncertain variant significance, affecting nearly half the patients reviewed.
  • The findings also highlighted that females were more likely to carry significant variants, with the highest diagnostic success seen in very young children and those tested for specific cardiomyopathy-related genes.
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Excessive trabeculation of the cardiac left ventricular wall is a complex phenotypic substrate associated with various physiological and pathological processes. There has been considerable conjecture as to whether hypertrabeculation contributes to disease and whether left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) cardiomyopathy is a distinct pathology. Building on recent insights into the genetic basis of LVNC cardiomyopathy, in particular three meta-analysis studies exploring genotype-phenotype associations using different methodologies, this review examines how genetic research can advance our understanding of trabeculation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists are now doing more genomic testing, which is checking our genes to see if we have or could get certain diseases.
  • They created a new database called CardiacG2P that helps understand how certain genes can cause heart diseases and makes it easier to find important gene changes.
  • By using this new database, they can better focus on the changes that really matter, making the process of testing for heart-related issues faster and more accurate.
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Aims: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is characterized by phenotypic heterogeneity that is partly explained by the diversity of genetic variants contributing to disease. Accurate interpretation of these variants constitutes a major challenge for diagnosis and implementing precision medicine, especially in understudied populations. The aim is to define the genetic architecture of HCM in North African cohorts with high consanguinity using ancestry-matched cases and controls.

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Article Synopsis
  • More places are starting to use genomic testing, which means regular doctors will be looking at genetic information instead of just specialists.
  • This study looks at 65 gene-disease pairs related to inherited heart conditions and created a new dataset called CardiacG2P to help understand genetic variants better.
  • By using CardiacG2P, labs can find important genetic changes more easily while still catching most harmful variants compared to other methods.*
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Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is an important cause of morbidity and mortality with both monogenic and polygenic components. We here report results from the largest HCM genome-wide association study (GWAS) and multi-trait analysis (MTAG) including 5,900 HCM cases, 68,359 controls, and 36,083 UK Biobank (UKB) participants with cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. We identified a total of 70 loci (50 novel) associated with HCM, and 62 loci (32 novel) associated with relevant left ventricular (LV) structural or functional traits.

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Article Synopsis
  • Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identify genetic variants linked to traits and diseases, with over 5,000 studies published since 2005 covering numerous traits.
  • These studies have deepened our understanding of the genetics behind cardiovascular diseases and highlighted connections between traits, revealing insights that may help assess disease risk.
  • The review also addresses the role of biobank data in enhancing research on rare cardiovascular conditions and outlines the challenges in the field, suggesting ways to overcome them.
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Discrete categorization of Mendelian disease genes into dominant and recessive models often oversimplifies their underlying genetic architecture. Cardiomyopathies (CMs) are genetic diseases with complex etiologies for which an increasing number of recessive associations have recently been proposed. Here, we comprehensively analyze all published evidence pertaining to biallelic variation associated with CM phenotypes to identify high-confidence recessive genes and explore the spectrum of monoallelic and biallelic variant effects in established recessive and dominant disease genes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Brugada syndrome (BrS) is a serious heart condition linked to sudden death in young adults, with few known genetic factors beyond the SCN5A gene.
  • A large study involving 2,820 BrS cases and 10,001 controls revealed 21 genetic signals across 12 locations, suggesting a strong genetic component to the disorder.
  • Key findings highlight the importance of transcription regulation in BrS development and introduce microtubule-related mechanisms that affect the expression of a key cardiac protein, shedding light on the disorder's genetic and molecular basis.
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Genetic cardiomyopathies are disorders of the cardiac muscle, most often explained by pathogenic mutations in genes encoding sarcomere, cytoskeleton, or ion channel proteins. Clinical phenotypes such as heart failure and arrhythmia are classically treated with generic drugs, but aetiology-specific and targeted treatments are lacking. As a result, cardiomyopathies still present a major burden to society, and affect many young and older patients.

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Aims: Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) and short QT syndrome (SQTS) are inherited arrhythmogenic disorders that can cause sudden death. Numerous genes have been reported to cause these conditions, but evidence supporting these gene-disease relationships varies considerably. To ensure appropriate utilization of genetic information for CPVT and SQTS patients, we applied an evidence-based reappraisal of previously reported genes.

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Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) was traditionally described as an autosomal dominant Mendelian disease but is now increasingly recognized as having a complex genetic aetiology. Although eight core genes encoding sarcomeric proteins account for >90% of the pathogenic variants in patients with HCM, variants in several additional genes (ACTN2, ALPK3, CSRP3, FHOD3, FLNC, JPH2, KLHL24, PLN and TRIM63), encoding non-sarcomeric proteins with diverse functions, have been shown to be disease-causing in a small number of patients. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous loci in cardiomyopathy case-control studies and biobank investigations of left ventricular functional traits.

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Synopsis of recent research by authors named "Roddy Walsh"

  • - Roddy Walsh's recent research primarily focuses on inherited cardiac conditions, particularly genetic variants associated with cardiac arrhythmias, cardiomyopathies, and their implications for diagnostics and treatment, as reflected in numerous studies about Brugada syndrome and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
  • - His work emphasizes the importance of large-scale genetic sequencing and biobanking efforts to identify rare coding variants and enhance understanding of genetic architecture across diverse populations, contributing to personalized medicine approaches in cardiology.
  • - Walsh also contributes to understanding the mechanistic pathways of cardiovascular diseases through genome-wide association studies and the re-evaluation of gene-disease validity, aiming to provide insights that will aid in the clinical management of patients with genetic heart conditions.