Normalizing sleep quality disturbed by psychiatric polypharmacy: a single patient open trial (SPOT).

There is a growing interest in personalized and preventive medicine initiatives that leverage serious patient engagement, such as those initiated and pursued among participants in the quantified-self movement. However, many of the self-assessments that result are not rooted in good scientific practices, such as exploiting controls, dose escalation strategies, multiple endpoint monitoring, etc. Areas where individual monitoring and health assessments have great potential involve sleep and behavior, as there are a number of very problematic sleep and behavior-related conditions that are hard to treat without personalization.

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the IL2RA gene are associated with age at diagnosis in late-onset Finnish type 1 diabetes subjects.

The onset of type 1 diabetes can occur at any age, with as many as half of all cases diagnosed after age 15. Despite this wide distribution in age at diagnosis, most genetic studies focus on cases diagnosed in childhood or during early adulthood. To better understand the genetics of late-onset type 1 diabetes, we collected a Finnish case/control cohort with all cases diagnosed between ages 15 and 40.

Meta-analysis of vitamin D receptor polymorphisms and type 1 diabetes: a HuGE review of genetic association studies.

Several polymorphisms in the vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene have been reported to be associated with the risk of developing type 1 diabetes, yet published findings have been conflicting. In this study, the authors attempted to evaluate the evidence regarding the association. They searched all relevant reports from original papers published from 1997 to December 2005.

Association of a polymorphism in the betacellulin gene with type 1 diabetes mellitus in two populations.

Betacellulin, a member of the epidermal growth factor family, is expressed in fetal and adult pancreas. In vitro and in vivo studies suggest a role for betacellulin in islet neogenesis and regeneration. Therefore, a mutation in the betacellulin gene might lead to fewer beta cells.

A comparison between SNaPshot, pyrosequencing, and biplex invader SNP genotyping methods: accuracy, cost, and throughput.

Three methods of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) detection: SNaPshot, Pyrosequencing and Biplex Invader, with two different chemistries were investigated to compare, (1) accuracy, (2) ease of use, (3) throughput capability, and (4) cost. We genotyped 192 human DNA samples across 24 SNPs (minor allele frequencies above 30%), of which seven SNPs were genotyped with all three methods. We show that the Biplex Invader genotyping method was found to be the most accurate and easiest to use with lowest cost, although Pyrosequencing provided similar results at a low cost.

A large set of Finnish affected sibling pair families with type 2 diabetes suggests susceptibility loci on chromosomes 6, 11, and 14.

The aim of the Finland-United States Investigation of NIDDM Genetics (FUSION) study is to identify genes that predispose to type 2 diabetes or are responsible for variability in diabetes-related traits via a positional cloning and positional candidate gene approach. In a previously published genome-wide scan of 478 Finnish affected sibling pair (ASP) families (FUSION 1), the strongest linkage results were on chromosomes 20 and 11. We now report a second genome-wide scan using an independent set of 242 Finnish ASP families (FUSION 2), a detailed analysis of the combined set of 737 FUSION 1 + 2 families (495 updated FUSION 1 families), and fine mapping of the regions of chromosomes 11 and 20.