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Browsing by Subject "Mendelian randomization"
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Item Bioinformatics detection of modulators controlling splicing factor‐dependent intron retention in the human brain(Wiley, 2022) Chen, Steven X.; Simpson, Ed; Reiter, Jill L.; Liu, Yunlong; Medical and Molecular Genetics, School of MedicineAlternative RNA splicing is an important means of genetic control and transcriptome diversity. However, when alternative splicing events are studied independently, coordinated splicing modulated by common factors is often not recognized. As a result, the molecular mechanisms of how splicing regulators promote or repress splice site recognition in a context‐dependent manner are not well understood. The functional coupling between multiple gene regulatory layers suggests that splicing is modulated by additional genetic or epigenetic components. Here, we developed a bioinformatics approach to identify causal modulators of splicing activity based on the variation of gene expression in large RNA sequencing datasets. We applied this approach in a neurological context with hundreds of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex samples. Our model is strengthened with the incorporation of genetic variants to impute gene expression in a Mendelian randomization‐based approach. We identified novel modulators of the splicing factor SRSF1, including UIMC1 and the long noncoding RNA CBR3‐AS1, that function over dozens of SRSF1 intron retention splicing targets. This strategy can be widely used to identify modulators of RNA‐binding proteins involved in tissue‐specific alternative splicing.Item Causal relationships between NAFLD, T2D and obesity have implications for disease subphenotyping(Elsevier, 2020-08) Liu, Zhipeng; Zhang, Yang; Graham, Sarah; Wang, Xiaokun; Cai, Defeng; Huang, Menghao; Pique-Regi, Roger; Dong, Xiaocheng Charlie; Chen, Y. Eugene; Willer, Cristen; Liu, Wanqing; Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of MedicineBackground & aims: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity are epidemiologically correlated with each other but the causal inter-relationships between them remain incompletely understood. We aimed to explore the causal relationships between the 3 diseases. Methods: Using both UK Biobank and publicly available genome-wide association study data, we performed a 2-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis to test the causal inter-relationships between NAFLD, T2D, and obesity. Transgenic mice expressing the human PNPLA3-I148M isoforms (TghPNPLA3-I148M) were used as an example to validate causal effects and explore underlying mechanisms. Results: Genetically driven NAFLD significantly increased the risk of T2D and central obesity but not insulin resistance or generalized obesity, while genetically driven T2D, body mass index and WHRadjBMI causally increased NAFLD risk. The animal study focusing on PNPLA3 corroborated these causal effects: compared to the TghPNPLA3-I148I controls, the TghPNPLA3-I148M mice developed glucose intolerance and increased visceral fat, but maintained normal insulin sensitivity, reduced body weight, and decreased circulating total cholesterol. Mechanistically, the TghPNPLA3-I148M mice demonstrated decreased pancreatic insulin but increased glucagon secretion, which was associated with increased pancreatic inflammation. In addition, transcription of hepatic cholesterol biosynthesis pathway genes was significantly suppressed, while transcription of thermogenic pathway genes was activated in subcutaneous and brown adipose tissues but not in visceral fat in TghPNPLA3-I148M mice. Conclusions: Our study suggests that lifelong, genetically driven NAFLD causally promotes T2D with a late-onset type 1-like diabetic subphenotype and central obesity; while genetically driven T2D, obesity, and central obesity all causally increase the risk of NAFLD. This causal relationship revealed new insights into how nature and nurture drive these diseases, providing novel hypotheses for disease subphenotyping. Lay summary: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity are epidemiologically correlated with each other, but their causal relationships were incompletely understood. Herein, we identified causal relationships between these conditions, which suggest that each of these closely related diseases should be further stratified into subtypes. This is important for accurate diagnosis, prevention and treatment of these diseases.Item CETP and SGLT2 inhibitor combination therapy increases glycemic control: a 2x2 factorial Mendelian randomization analysis(Frontiers Media, 2024-06-19) Khomtchouk, Bohdan B.; Sun, Patrick; Maggio, Zane A.; Ditmarsch, Marc; Kastelein, John J. P.; Davidson, Michael H.; Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and EngineeringIntroduction: Cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) inhibitors, initially developed for treating hyperlipidemia, have shown promise in reducing the risk of new-onset diabetes during clinical trials. This positions CETP inhibitors as potential candidates for repurposing in metabolic disease treatment. Given their oral administration, they could complement existing oral medications like sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, potentially delaying the need for injectable therapies such as insulin. Methods: We conducted a 2x2 factorial Mendelian Randomization analysis involving 233,765 participants from the UK Biobank. This study aimed to evaluate whether simultaneous genetic inhibition of CETP and SGLT2 enhances glycemic control compared to inhibiting each separately. Results: Our findings indicate that dual genetic inhibition of CETP and SGLT2 significantly reduces glycated hemoglobin levels compared to controls and single-agent inhibition. Additionally, the combined inhibition is linked to a lower incidence of diabetes compared to both the control group and SGLT2 inhibition alone. Discussion: These results suggest that combining CETP and SGLT2 inhibitor therapies may offer superior glycemic control over SGLT2 inhibitors alone. Future clinical trials should investigate the potential of repurposing CETP inhibitors for metabolic disease treatment, providing an oral therapeutic option that could benefit high-risk patients before they require injectable therapies like insulin or glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists.Item Evidence of causal effect of major depression on alcohol dependence: findings from the psychiatric genomics consortium(Cambridge University Press, 2019-05) Polimanti, Renato; Peterson, Roseann E.; Ong, Jue-Sheng; MacGregor, Stuart; Edwards, Alexis C.; Clarke, Toni-Kim; Frank, Josef; Gerring, Zachary; Gillespie, Nathan A.; Lind, Penelope A.; Maes, Hermine H.; Martin, Nicholas G.; Mbarek, Hamdi; Medland, Sarah E.; Streit, Fabian; Agrawal, Arpana; Edenberg, Howard J.; Kendler, Kenneth S.; Lewis, Cathryn M.; Sullivan, Patrick F.; Wray, Naomi R.; Gelernter, Joel; Derks, Eske M.; Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of MedicineBACKGROUND: Despite established clinical associations among major depression (MD), alcohol dependence (AD), and alcohol consumption (AC), the nature of the causal relationship between them is not completely understood. We leveraged genome-wide data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and UK Biobank to test for the presence of shared genetic mechanisms and causal relationships among MD, AD, and AC. METHODS: Linkage disequilibrium score regression and Mendelian randomization (MR) were performed using genome-wide data from the PGC (MD: 135 458 cases and 344 901 controls; AD: 10 206 cases and 28 480 controls) and UK Biobank (AC-frequency: 438 308 individuals; AC-quantity: 307 098 individuals). RESULTS: Positive genetic correlation was observed between MD and AD (rgMD-AD = + 0.47, P = 6.6 × 10-10). AC-quantity showed positive genetic correlation with both AD (rgAD-AC quantity = + 0.75, P = 1.8 × 10-14) and MD (rgMD-AC quantity = + 0.14, P = 2.9 × 10-7), while there was negative correlation of AC-frequency with MD (rgMD-AC frequency = -0.17, P = 1.5 × 10-10) and a non-significant result with AD. MR analyses confirmed the presence of pleiotropy among these four traits. However, the MD-AD results reflect a mediated-pleiotropy mechanism (i.e. causal relationship) with an effect of MD on AD (beta = 0.28, P = 1.29 × 10-6). There was no evidence for reverse causation. CONCLUSION: This study supports a causal role for genetic liability of MD on AD based on genetic datasets including thousands of individuals. Understanding mechanisms underlying MD-AD comorbidity addresses important public health concerns and has the potential to facilitate prevention and intervention efforts.Item Genetically predicted circulating concentrations of micronutrients and risk of colorectal cancer among individuals of European descent: a Mendelian randomization study(Elsevier, 2021) Tsilidis, Konstantinos K.; Papadimitriou, Nikos; Dimou, Niki; Gill, Dipender; Lewis, Sarah J.; Martin, Richard M.; Murphy, Neil; Markozannes, Georgios; Zuber, Verena; Cross, Amanda J.; Burrows, Kimberley; Lopez, David S.; Key, Timothy J.; Travis, Ruth C.; Perez-Cornago, Aurora; Hunter, David J.; van Duijnhoven, Fränzel J. B.; Albanes, Demetrius; Arndt, Volker; Berndt, Sonja I.; Bézieau, Stéphane; Bishop, D. Timothy; Boehm, Juergen; Brenner, Hermann; Burnett-Hartman, Andrea; Campbell, Peter T.; Casey, Graham; Castellví-Bel, Sergi; Chan, Andrew T.; Chang-Claude, Jenny; de la Chapelle, Albert; Figueiredo, Jane C.; Gallinger, Steven J.; Giles, Graham G.; Goodman, Phyllis J.; Gsur, Andrea; Hampe, Jochen; Hampel, Heather; Hoffmeister, Michael; Jenkins, Mark A.; Keku, Temitope O.; Kweon, Sun-Seog; Larsson, Susanna C.; Le Marchand, Loic; Li, Christopher I.; Li, Li; Lindblom, Annika; Martín, Vicente; Milne, Roger L.; Moreno, Victor; Nan, Hongmei; Nassir, Rami; Newcomb, Polly A.; Offit, Kenneth; Pharoah, Paul D. P.; Platz, Elizabeth A.; Potter, John D.; Qi, Lihong; Rennert, Gad; Sakoda, Lori C.; Schafmayer, Clemens; Slattery, Martha L.; Snetselaar, Linda; Schenk, Jeanette; Thibodeau, Stephen N.; Ulrich, Cornelia M.; Van Guelpen, Bethany; Harlid, Sophia; Visvanathan, Kala; Vodickova, Ludmila; Wang, Hansong; White, Emily; Wolk, Alicja; Woods, Michael O.; Wu, Anna H.; Zheng, Wei; Bueno-de-Mesquita, Bas; Boutron-Ruault, Marie-Christine; Hughes, David J.; Jakszyn, Paula; Kühn, Tilman; Palli, Domenico; Riboli, Elio; Giovannucci, Edward L.; Banbury, Barbara L.; Gruber, Stephen B.; Peters, Ulrike; Gunter, Marc J.; Epidemiology, School of Public HealthBackground: The literature on associations of circulating concentrations of minerals and vitamins with risk of colorectal cancer is limited and inconsistent. Evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to support the efficacy of dietary modification or nutrient supplementation for colorectal cancer prevention is also limited. Objectives: To complement observational and RCT findings, we investigated associations of genetically predicted concentrations of 11 micronutrients (β-carotene, calcium, copper, folate, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12, and zinc) with colorectal cancer risk using Mendelian randomization (MR). Methods: Two-sample MR was conducted using 58,221 individuals with colorectal cancer and 67,694 controls from the Genetics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer Consortium, Colorectal Cancer Transdisciplinary Study, and Colon Cancer Family Registry. Inverse variance-weighted MR analyses were performed with sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of potential violations of MR assumptions. Results: Nominally significant associations were noted for genetically predicted iron concentration and higher risk of colon cancer [ORs per SD (ORSD): 1.08; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.17; P value = 0.05] and similarly for proximal colon cancer, and for vitamin B-12 concentration and higher risk of colorectal cancer (ORSD: 1.12; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.21; P value = 0.01) and similarly for colon cancer. A nominally significant association was also noted for genetically predicted selenium concentration and lower risk of colon cancer (ORSD: 0.98; 95% CI: 0.96, 1.00; P value = 0.05) and similarly for distal colon cancer. These associations were robust to sensitivity analyses. Nominally significant inverse associations were observed for zinc and risk of colorectal and distal colon cancers, but sensitivity analyses could not be performed. None of these findings survived correction for multiple testing. Genetically predicted concentrations of β-carotene, calcium, copper, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, and vitamin B-6 were not associated with disease risk. Conclusions: These results suggest possible causal associations of circulating iron and vitamin B-12 (positively) and selenium (inversely) with risk of colon cancer.Item Mining the Plasma Proteome for Insights into the Molecular Pathology of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension(American Thoracic Society, 2022) Harbaum, Lars; Rhodes, Christopher J.; Wharton, John; Lawrie, Allan; Karnes, Jason H.; Desai, Ankit A.; Nichols, William C.; Humbert, Marc; Montani, David; Girerd, Barbara; Sitbon, Olivier; Boehm, Mario; Novoyatleva, Tatyana; Schermuly, Ralph T.; Ghofrani, H. Ardeschir; Toshner, Mark; Kiely, David G.; Howard, Luke S.; Swietlik, Emilia M.; Gräf, Stefan; Pietzner, Maik; Morrell, Nicholas W.; Wilkins, Martin R.; U.K. National Institute for Health Research BioResource Rare Diseases Consortium; U.K. Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Cohort Study Consortium; U.S. Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Biobank Consortium; Medical and Molecular Genetics, School of MedicineRationale: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterized by structural remodeling of pulmonary arteries and arterioles. Underlying biological processes are likely reflected in a perturbation of circulating proteins. Objectives: To quantify and analyze the plasma proteome of patients with PAH using inherited genetic variation to inform on underlying molecular drivers. Methods: An aptamer-based assay was used to measure plasma proteins in 357 patients with idiopathic or heritable PAH, 103 healthy volunteers, and 23 relatives of patients with PAH. In discovery and replication subgroups, the plasma proteomes of PAH and healthy individuals were compared, and the relationship to transplantation-free survival in PAH was determined. To examine causal relationships to PAH, protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) that influenced protein levels in the patient population were used as instruments for Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. Measurements and Main Results: From 4,152 annotated plasma proteins, levels of 208 differed between patients with PAH and healthy subjects, and 49 predicted long-term survival. MR based on cis-pQTL located in proximity to the encoding gene for proteins that were prognostic and distinguished PAH from health estimated an adverse effect for higher levels of netrin-4 (odds ratio [OR], 1.55; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.16–2.08) and a protective effect for higher levels of thrombospondin-2 (OR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.74–0.94) on PAH. Both proteins tracked the development of PAH in previously healthy relatives and changes in thrombospondin-2 associated with pulmonary arterial pressure at disease onset. Conclusions: Integrated analysis of the plasma proteome and genome implicates two secreted matrix-binding proteins, netrin-4 and thrombospondin-2, in the pathobiology of PAH.Item Modulation of Splicing Factor Function and Alternative Splicing Outcomes(2022-06) Chen, Steven Xiwei; Liu, Yunlong; Lu, Xiongbin; Schneider, Bryan P.; Wek, Ronald C.Alternative RNA splicing is an important means of genetic control and transcriptome diversity. Alternative splicing events are frequently studied independently, and coordinated splicing controlled by common factors is often overlooked: The molecular mechanisms by which splicing regulators promote or repress specific pre-mRNA processing are still not yet well understood. It is well known that splicing factors can regulate splicing in a context-dependent manner, and the search for modulation of splicing factor activity via direct or indirect mechanisms is a worthwhile pursuit towards explaining context-dependent activity. We hypothesized that the combined analysis of hundreds of consortium RNA-seq datasets could identify trans-acting “modulators” whose expression is correlated with differential effects of a splicing factor on its target splice events in mRNAs. We first tested a genome-wide approach to identify relationships between RNA-binding proteins and their inferred modulators in kidney cancer. We then applied a more targeted approach to identify novel modulators of splicing factor SRSF1 function over dozens of its intron retention splicing targets in a neurological context using hundreds of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex samples. Our hypothesized model was further strengthened with the incorporation of genetic variants to impute gene expression in a Mendelian randomization-based approach. The modulators of intron retention splicing we identified may be associated with risk variants linked to Alzheimer’s Disease, among other neurological disorders, to explain disease-causing splicing mechanisms. Our strategy can be widely used to identify modulators of RNA-binding proteins involved in tissue-specific alternative splicing.Item Potential causal effect of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on alcohol use disorder and alcohol consumption in individuals of European descent: A Mendelian Randomization Study(Wiley, 2021) Bountress, Kaitlin E.; Wendt, Frank; Bustamante, Daniel; Agrawal, Arpana; Webb, Bradley; Gillespie, Nathan; Edenberg, Howard; Sheerin, Christina; Johnson, Emma; The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Working Group; Polimanti, Renato; Amstadter, Ananda; Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of MedicineBackground: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often co-occurs with alcohol consumption (AC) and alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, it is unknown whether the same etiologic influences that underlie PTSD co-occurring with AUD are those that underlie PTSD and AC individually. Methods: This study used large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) data to test whether PTSD and drinks per week [DPW]/AUD are causally related to one another, and, if so, whether PTSD precedes DPW/AUD and/or vice versa. We used Mendelian Randomization methods to analyze European ancestry GWAS summary statistics from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC; PTSD), GWAS & Sequencing Consortium of Alcohol and Nicotine Use (GSCAN; DPW), and the Million Veteran Program (MVP; AUD). Results: PTSD exerted a potentially causal effect on AUD (β = 0.039, SE = 0.014, p = 0.005), but not on DPW (β = 0.002, SE = 0.003, p = 0.414). Additionally, neither DPW (β = 0.019, SE = 0.041, p = 0.637) nor AUD (β = 8.87 × 10-4 , SE = 0.001, p = 0.441) exerted a causal effect on PTSD. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with the self-medication model, in which individuals misuse alcohol to cope with aversive trauma-related symptoms. These findings extend latent analysis and molecular findings of shared and correlated risk between PTSD and alcohol phenotypes. Given the health behaviors associated with these phenotypes, these findings are important in that they suggest groups to prioritize for prevention efforts. Further, they provide a rationale for future preclinical and clinical studies examining the biological mechanisms by which PTSD may impact AUD.