Publications by authors named "Sarah Pendergrass"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the genetic factors contributing to the decline in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a key indicator of kidney function, by analyzing data from 62 longitudinal studies involving over 343,000 participants.
  • Twelve significant genetic variants related to eGFR decline were identified, with most showing interaction effects based on age, which highlights how genetic influences on kidney function change as individuals get older.
  • The findings emphasize that individuals with certain genetic profiles face higher risks for kidney failure and acute kidney injury, providing valuable insights that could aid in drug development and strategies for managing kidney health.
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Article Synopsis
  • Reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is a precursor to kidney failure, influenced by factors like genetics and diabetes (DM), but the interaction between these factors is not well understood.
  • A large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyzed eGFR across almost 1.5 million individuals, revealing distinct genetic loci that differ between those with and without diabetes.
  • The findings identified potential new targets for drug development aimed at protecting kidney function, highlighting that many drug interventions could be effective for both diabetic and non-diabetic populations.
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Uterine fibroids (UF) are common pelvic tumors in women, heritable, and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified ~ 30 loci associated with increased risk in UF. Using summary statistics from a previously published UF GWAS performed in a non-Hispanic European Ancestry (NHW) female subset from the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, we constructed a polygenic risk score (PRS) for UF. UF-PRS was developed using PRSice and optimized in the separate clinical population of BioVU.

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Increased blood lipid levels are heritable risk factors of cardiovascular disease with varied prevalence worldwide owing to different dietary patterns and medication use. Despite advances in prevention and treatment, in particular through reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Genome-wideassociation studies (GWAS) of blood lipid levels have led to important biological and clinical insights, as well as new drug targets, for cardiovascular disease.

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Article Synopsis
  • The genetic encoding of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) typically relies on traditional models (additive, dominant, recessive), but these may not accurately represent all SNPs, leading to a high multiple testing burden.
  • The novel elastic data-driven genetic encoding (EDGE) assigns heterozygous values to SNPs based on the specific model they demonstrate in a given dataset, showing superior power to detect genetic interactions with lower false-positive rates compared to traditional methods.
  • In analyses of genetic data from various phenotypes, EDGE successfully identified novel SNP-SNP interactions (e.g., for age-related cataract) that were missed by traditional encodings, suggesting its effectiveness in genetic studies.
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Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) represents a slowly progressive disorder that is typically silent until late stages, but early intervention can significantly delay its progression. We designed a portable and scalable electronic CKD phenotype to facilitate early disease recognition and empower large-scale observational and genetic studies of kidney traits. The algorithm uses a combination of rule-based and machine-learning methods to automatically place patients on the staging grid of albuminuria by glomerular filtration rate ("A-by-G" grid).

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  • Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is a heritable eye condition leading to blindness and the study involved a large genetic analysis of over 34,000 patients and nearly 350,000 controls from different ethnic backgrounds.
  • Researchers identified 44 new genetic risk factors for POAG and confirmed 83 previously known ones, finding consistent impacts across various ancestries.
  • The study also suggests that certain genes could play significant roles in the disease's development, indicating potential new drug treatments targeting these genetic risk factors.
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Increasingly, clinical phenotypes with matched genetic data from bio-bank linked electronic health records (EHRs) have been used for pleiotropy analyses. Thus far, pleiotropy analysis using individual-level EHR data has been limited to data from one site. However, it is desirable to integrate EHR data from multiple sites to improve the detection power and generalizability of the results.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the genetic factors contributing to the rapid decline in glomerular filtration rate (eGFRcrea), using data from 42 genome-wide association studies to analyze genetic loci linked to this decline.
  • - Two specific definitions of rapid eGFRcrea decline are examined, leading to the identification of seven independent genetic variants associated with this condition, including significant findings near three novel loci.
  • - The research suggests that individuals with a higher genetic risk for kidney function decline are more likely to experience acute kidney injury, indicating that these identified genetic loci could help in developing targeted therapies and identifying at-risk individuals.
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Carotid artery atherosclerotic disease (CAAD) is a risk factor for stroke. We used a genome-wide association (GWAS) approach to discover genetic variants associated with CAAD in participants in the electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. We identified adult CAAD cases with unilateral or bilateral carotid artery stenosis and controls without evidence of stenosis from electronic health records at eight eMERGE sites.

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Article Synopsis
  • Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a condition involving disrupted airflow during sleep, connected to various health issues, and understanding its genetic factors can improve treatment options.
  • Researchers analyzed genetic variations (SNPs) linked to OSA using health data from Geisinger and Vanderbilt to determine their association with OSA diagnosis and severity.
  • While many previously identified SNPs showed little to no correlation with OSA, a few (LEPR, MMP-9, GABBR1) were validated as associated with OSA diagnosis and severity, with some SNPs also linked to other health conditions like hyperlipidemia.
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Electronic health records are an increasingly important resource for understanding the interactions between patient health, environment, and clinical decisions. In this paper we report an empirical study of predictive modeling of seven patient outcomes using three state-of-the-art machine learning methods. Our primary goal is to validate the models by interpreting the importance of predictors in the final models.

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Background: Polycystic ovary syndrome is the most common endocrine disorder affecting women of reproductive age. A number of criteria have been developed for clinical diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome, with the Rotterdam criteria being the most inclusive. Evidence suggests that polycystic ovary syndrome is significantly heritable, and previous studies have identified genetic variants associated with polycystic ovary syndrome diagnosed using different criteria.

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Context: As many as 75% of patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are estimated to be unidentified in clinical practice.

Objective: Utilizing polygenic risk prediction, we aim to identify the phenome-wide comorbidity patterns characteristic of PCOS to improve accurate diagnosis and preventive treatment.

Design, Patients, And Methods: Leveraging the electronic health records (EHRs) of 124 852 individuals, we developed a PCOS risk prediction algorithm by combining polygenic risk scores (PRS) with PCOS component phenotypes into a polygenic and phenotypic risk score (PPRS).

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We performed a hypothesis-generating phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) to identify and characterize cross-phenotype associations, where one SNP is associated with two or more phenotypes, between thousands of genetic variants assayed on the Metabochip and hundreds of phenotypes in 5,897 African Americans as part of the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) I study. The PAGE I study was a National Human Genome Research Institute-funded collaboration of four study sites accessing diverse epidemiologic studies genotyped on the Metabochip, a custom genotyping chip that has dense coverage of regions in the genome previously associated with cardio-metabolic traits and outcomes in mostly European-descent populations. Here we focus on identifying novel phenome-genome relationships, where SNPs are associated with more than one phenotype.

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Elevated serum urate levels cause gout and correlate with cardiometabolic diseases via poorly understood mechanisms. We performed a trans-ancestry genome-wide association study of serum urate in 457,690 individuals, identifying 183 loci (147 previously unknown) that improve the prediction of gout in an independent cohort of 334,880 individuals. Serum urate showed significant genetic correlations with many cardiometabolic traits, with genetic causality analyses supporting a substantial role for pleiotropy.

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Article Synopsis
  • Increased urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) is linked to higher risks of kidney disease and cardiovascular issues, yet the underlying causes are not fully understood.
  • A large meta-analysis identified 68 genetic loci associated with UACR, highlighting connections to conditions like proteinuria, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension.
  • Specific genes (such as TGFB1 and PRKCI) were implicated in kidney function, and experiments showed that disrupting these genes in fruit flies affects albumin processing, suggesting new avenues for research to lower albumin levels.
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Background: The alpha-adrenergic agonist phenylephrine is often used to treat hypotension during anesthesia. In clinical situations, low blood pressure may require prompt intervention by intravenous bolus or infusion. Differences in responsiveness to phenylephrine treatment are commonly observed in clinical practice.

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Uterine fibroids affect up to 77% of women by menopause and account for up to $34 billion in healthcare costs each year. Although fibroid risk is heritable, genetic risk for fibroids is not well understood. We conducted a two-stage case-control meta-analysis of genetic variants in European and African ancestry women with and without fibroids classified by a previously published algorithm requiring pelvic imaging or confirmed diagnosis.

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Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is responsible for a public health burden with multi-systemic complications. Through trans-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and independent replication (n = 1,046,070), we identified 264 associated loci (166 new). Of these, 147 were likely to be relevant for kidney function on the basis of associations with the alternative kidney function marker blood urea nitrogen (n = 416,178).

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The link between cardiovascular diseases and neurological disorders has been widely observed in the aging population. Disease prevention and treatment rely on understanding the potential genetic nexus of multiple diseases in these categories. In this study, we were interested in detecting pleiotropy, or the phenomenon in which a genetic variant influences more than one phenotype.

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We conducted an electronic health record (EHR)-based phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) to discover pleiotropic effects of variants in three lipoprotein metabolism genes , , and . Using high-density genotype data, we tested the associations of variants in the three genes with 1232 EHR-derived binary phecodes in 51,700 European-ancestry (EA) individuals and 585 phecodes in 10,276 African-ancestry (AA) individuals; 457 , 730 , and 720 variants were filtered by imputation quality (  > 0.4), minor allele frequency (>1%), linkage disequilibrium (  < 0.

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Background: The development of sequencing techniques and statistical methods provides great opportunities for identifying the impact of rare genetic variation on complex traits. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the impact of sample size, case numbers, the balance of cases vs controls for both burden and dispersion based rare variant association methods. For example, Phenome-Wide Association Studies may have a wide range of case and control sample sizes across hundreds of diagnoses and traits, and with the application of statistical methods to rare variants, it is important to understand the strengths and limitations of the analyses.

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With the urgency to treat patients more effectively for opioid use disorder in the midst of the opioid epidemic, a key area for precision medicine is to improve individualized medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. The expansion of medication-assisted treatment is a key to reducing illicit opioid use, preventing opioid overdose deaths, and reducing the comorbidities and societal impacts of opioid use disorder. The most common medication for opioid use disorder will soon be buprenorphine.

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