The NASA Twins Study: A multidimensional analysis of a year-long human spaceflight.

To understand the health impact of long-duration spaceflight, one identical twin astronaut was monitored before, during, and after a 1-year mission onboard the International Space Station; his twin served as a genetically matched ground control. Longitudinal assessments identified spaceflight-specific changes, including decreased body mass, telomere elongation, genome instability, carotid artery distension and increased intima-media thickness, altered ocular structure, transcriptional and metabolic changes, DNA methylation changes in immune and oxidative stress-related pathways, gastrointestinal microbiota alterations, and some cognitive decline postflight. Although average telomere length, global gene expression, and microbiome changes returned to near preflight levels within 6 months after return to Earth, increased numbers of short telomeres were observed and expression of some genes was still disrupted.

Beyond a Binary Classification of Sex: An Examination of Brain Sex Differentiation, Psychopathology, and Genotype.

Objective: Sex differences in the brain are traditionally treated as binary. We present new evidence that a continuous measure of sex differentiation of the brain can explain sex differences in psychopathology. The degree of sex-differentiated brain features (ie, features that are more common in one sex) may predispose individuals toward sex-biased psychopathology and may also be influenced by the genome.

Complex HLA association in paraneoplastic cerebellar ataxia with anti-Yo antibodies.

Anti-Yo paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration (PCD) is a devastating autoimmune complication of gynecological cancers. We hypothesized that as for other autoimmune diseases, specific HLA haplotypes are associated. We conducted high resolution HLA typing of Class I/Class II in 40 cases versus ethnically matched controls.

Association Between Telomere Length and Risk of Cancer and Non-Neoplastic Diseases: A Mendelian Randomization Study.

Importance: The causal direction and magnitude of the association between telomere length and incidence of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases is uncertain owing to the susceptibility of observational studies to confounding and reverse causation.

Objective: To conduct a Mendelian randomization study, using germline genetic variants as instrumental variables, to appraise the causal relevance of telomere length for risk of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases.

Data Sources: Genomewide association studies (GWAS) published up to January 15, 2015.