General personality dimensions, impairment and treatment response in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

General personality dimensions are associated with clinical severity and treatment response in individuals with depression and many anxiety disorders, but little is known about these relationships in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals in the current study included 705 adults with OCD who had participated in family and genetic studies of the disorder. Participants self-completed the Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness Personality Inventory or Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness Five-Factor Inventory-3.

Immune-Related Comorbidities in Childhood-Onset Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Lifetime Prevalence in the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Collaborative Genetics Association Study.

To evaluate the lifetime prevalence of infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune disorders in a multisite study of probands with childhood-onset obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and their first-degree relatives. Medical questionnaires were completed by 1401 probands and 1045 first-degree relatives in the OCD Collaborative Genetics Association Study. Lifetime prevalence of immune-related diseases was compared with the highest available population estimate and reported as a point estimate with 95% adjusted Wald interval.

Robust Reference Powered Association Test of Genome-Wide Association Studies.

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified abundant genetic susceptibility loci, GWAS of small sample size are far less from meeting the previous expectations due to low statistical power and false positive results. Effective statistical methods are required to further improve the analyses of massive GWAS data. Here we presented a new statistic (Robust Reference Powered Association Test) to use large public database (gnomad) as reference to reduce concern of potential population stratification.

Correction: Exploratory genome-wide association analysis of response to ketamine and a polygenic analysis of response to scopolamine in depression.

Michael F. Grunebaum's name was misspelled/misstated as "Gruenbaum M.F.

Exploratory genome-wide association analysis of response to ketamine and a polygenic analysis of response to scopolamine in depression.

Growing evidence suggests that the glutamatergic modulator ketamine has rapid antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depressed subjects. The anticholinergic agent scopolamine has also shown promise as a rapid-acting antidepressant. This study applied genome-wide markers to investigate the role of genetic variants in predicting acute antidepressant response to both agents.

knnAUC: an open-source R package for detecting nonlinear dependence between one continuous variable and one binary variable.

Background: Testing the dependence of two variables is one of the fundamental tasks in statistics. In this work, we developed an open-source R package (knnAUC) for detecting nonlinear dependence between one continuous variable X and one binary dependent variables Y (0 or 1).

Results: We addressed this problem by using knnAUC (k-nearest neighbors AUC test, the R package is available at https://sourceforge.

Genome-Wide Association Study of Susceptibility Loci for Radiation-Induced Brain Injury.

Background: Radiation-induced brain injury is a nonnegligible issue in the management of cancer patients treated by partial or whole brain irradiation. In particular, temporal lobe injury (TLI), a deleterious late complication in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, greatly affects the long-term life quality of these patients. Although genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have successfully identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with radiation toxicity, genetic variants contributing to the radiation-induced brain injury have not yet been assessed.

Decreased Gray Matter Volume of Cuneus and Lingual Gyrus in Schizophrenia Patients with Tardive Dyskinesia is Associated with Abnormal Involuntary Movement.

Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is a devastating motor disorder associated with the etiological process of schizophrenia or antipsychotic medication treatments. To examine whether cerebral morphological changes may manifest in TD, we used voxel-based morphometry to analyze high-resolution T1-weighted brain structural magnetic resonance images from 32 schizophrenics with TD (TD group), 31 schizophrenics without TD (non-TD group), and 32 healthy controls (HC group). We also assessed psychopathological symptoms with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and TD severity with the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS).

Nuclear Norm Clustering: a promising alternative method for clustering tasks.

Clustering techniques are widely used in many applications. The goal of clustering is to identify patterns or groups of similar objects within a dataset of interest. However, many cluster methods are neither robust nor sensitive to noises and outliers in real data.

Self-reported executive function and hoarding in adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: Hoarding behavior may distinguish a clinically and possibly etiologically distinct subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Little is known about the relationship between executive dysfunction and hoarding in individuals with OCD.

Methods: The study sample included 431 adults diagnosed with DSM-IV OCD.

Diagnostic value of blood-derived microRNAs for schizophrenia: results of a meta-analysis and validation.

There is an increasing interest in searching biomarkers for schizophrenia (SZ) diagnosis, which overcomes the drawbacks inherent with the subjective diagnostic methods. MicroRNA (miRNA) fingerprints have been explored for disease diagnosis. We performed a meta-analysis to examine miRNA diagnostic value for SZ and further validated the meta-analysis results.

Bagging Nearest-Neighbor Prediction independence Test: an efficient method for nonlinear dependence of two continuous variables.

Testing dependence/correlation of two variables is one of the fundamental tasks in statistics. In this work, we proposed an efficient method for nonlinear dependence of two continuous variables (X and Y). We addressed this research question by using BNNPT (Bagging Nearest-Neighbor Prediction independence Test, software available at https://sourceforge.

An Integrative Computational Approach to Evaluate Genetic Markers for Bipolar Disorder.

Studies to date have reported hundreds of genes connected to bipolar disorder (BP). However, many studies identifying candidate genes have lacked replication, and their results have, at times, been inconsistent with one another. This paper, therefore, offers a computational workflow that can curate and evaluate BP-related genetic data.

Whole-genome sequencing of monozygotic twins discordant for schizophrenia indicates multiple genetic risk factors for schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a common disorder with a high heritability, but its genetic architecture is still elusive. We implemented whole-genome sequencing (WGS) analysis of 8 families with monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia to assess potential association of de novo mutations (DNMs) or inherited variants with susceptibility to schizophrenia. Eight non-synonymous DNMs (including one splicing site) were identified and shared by twins, which were either located in previously reported schizophrenia risk genes (p.

Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) between Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The aim of this study was to identify any potential genetic overlap between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We hypothesized that since these disorders share a sub-phenotype, they may share common risk alleles. In this manuscript, we report the overlap found between these two disorders.

An investigation of doubt in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: Clinicians have long considered doubt to be a fundamental characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, the clinical relevance of doubt in OCD has not been addressed.

Methods: Participants included 1182 adults with OCD who had participated in family and genetic studies of OCD.

ADAR2 functions as a tumor suppressor via editing IGFBP7 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), one of the most aggressive cancers, is characterized by heterogeneous genetic and epigenetic changes. Recently, A-to-I RNA editing, catalyzed by adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs), was found to be aberrantly regulated during tumorigenesis. We previously reported that ADAR2 was downregulated in ESCC but its role was unclear.

Integrating multiple genomic data: sparse representation based biomarker selection for blood pressure.

Background: Although many genes have been implicated as hypertension candidates, to date, few studies have integrated different types of genomic data for the purpose of biomarker selection.

Methods: Applying a newly proposed sparse representation based variable selection (SRVS) method to the Genetic Analysis Workshop19 data, we analyzed a combined data set consisting of 11522 gene expressions and 354893 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 397 subjects (case/control: 151/246), with the aim to identify potential biomarkers for blood pressure using both gene expression measures and SNP data.

Results: Among the top 1000 variables (SNPs/gene expressions = 575/425) selected, the bioinformatics analysis showed that 302 were plausibly associated with blood pressure.

Parental bonding and hoarding in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: Hoarding behavior may indicate a clinically and possibly etiologically distinct subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Empirical evidence supports a relationship between hoarding and emotional over-attachment to objects. However, little is known about the relationship between hoarding and parental attachment in OCD.

ADHD and executive functioning deficits in OCD youths who hoard.

Hoarding is common among youth with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), with up to 26% of OCD youth exhibiting hoarding symptoms. Recent evidence from adult hoarding and OCD cohorts suggests that hoarding symptoms are associated with executive functioning deficits similar to those observed in subjects with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, while hoarding behavior often onsets during childhood, there is little information about executive function deficits and ADHD in affected children and adolescents.

Random Bits Forest: a Strong Classifier/Regressor for Big Data.

Efficiency, memory consumption, and robustness are common problems with many popular methods for data analysis. As a solution, we present Random Bits Forest (RBF), a classification and regression algorithm that integrates neural networks (for depth), boosting (for width), and random forests (for prediction accuracy). Through a gradient boosting scheme, it first generates and selects ~10,000 small, 3-layer random neural networks.

No association between ZNF804A rs1344706 and schizophrenia in a case-control study of Han Chinese.

Previous studies indicated that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1344706 within the gene ZNF804A was a promising risk variant for schizophrenia in European populations. However, existing results are inconsistent in Han Chinese. Hoping to validate the association of rs1344706 with schizophrenia susceptibility in Han Chinese, we conducted a case-control study in 1284 cases and 990 healthy controls from Jiangsu Province, China.

Evidence for contribution of common genetic variants within chromosome 8p21.2-8p21.1 to restricted and repetitive behaviors in autism spectrum disorders.

Background: Restricted and Repetitive Behaviors (RRB), one of the core symptom categories for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), comprises heterogeneous groups of behaviors. Previous research indicates that there are two or more factors (subcategories) within the RRB domain. In an effort to identify common variants associated with RRB, we have carried out a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) dataset (n = 1,335, all ASD probands of European ancestry) for each identified RRB subcategory, while allowing for comparisons of associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with associated SNPs in the same set of probands analyzed using all the RRB subcategories as phenotypes in a multivariate linear mixed model.

Genetic influences on schizophrenia and subcortical brain volumes: large-scale proof of concept.

Schizophrenia is a devastating psychiatric illness with high heritability. Brain structure and function differ, on average, between people with schizophrenia and healthy individuals. As common genetic associations are emerging for both schizophrenia and brain imaging phenotypes, we can now use genome-wide data to investigate genetic overlap.