Article
Genetics & Heredity
Jie Song, Yiqing Zou, Yuchang Wu, Jiacheng Miao, Ze Yu, Jason M. Fletcher, Qiongshi Lu
Summary: Recent evidence suggests that genetic effects on complex human traits can be mediated by the environmental factors, such as parental behavior and family environment. Conventional genome-wide association studies may capture these environmentally mediated effects, leading to biased interpretation of genotype-phenotype associations. To address this limitation, a statistical framework named PARSEC is proposed to partition the genetic components of single traits and shared genetic components between traits into direct and indirect effect paths. This approach has broad applications in future GWAS analysis for complex traits affected by parental genetics and family environment.
Review
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Seher Topluoglu, Aysegul Taylan-Ozkan, Emine Alp
Summary: Emerging Infectious Diseases (EIDs) and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases (REIDs) are significant health problems, with up to 75% having zoonotic origin. Factors like destruction of habitats, population migration due to conflicts, and insufficient disease prevention programs contribute to their emergence and distribution. Natural disasters and wars have a major impact on the spread of diseases and worsen health risks.
FRONTIERS IN PUBLIC HEALTH
(2023)
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Nadine C. Lages, Luka J. Debbeler, Michael Blumenschein, Josianne Kollmann, Hermann Szymczak, Daniel A. Keim, Harald T. Schupp, Britta Renner
Summary: The study examined the accuracy of risk perceptions for three infectious diseases using three different standards, highlighting the dynamic changes in risk perceptions during epidemic/seasonal and nonepidemic/off-season times.
Review
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Atif Abdulwahab A. Oyouni
Summary: The antigens of the ABO blood group systems have effects on the expression of red blood cells and various pathological and normal cells and tissues. ABO antigens are associated with the development of tumors and cancers, and are used as prognostic biomarkers. The normal development in humans requires various epigenetic marks, and changes in these marks can lead to human disorders.
JOURNAL OF KING SAUD UNIVERSITY SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Genetics & Heredity
Piter Bijma, Andries D. Hulst, Mart C. M. de Jong
Summary: This article proposes a quantitative genetic theory for the prevalence of infectious diseases, highlighting the significant impact of genetic factors on disease prevalence. It demonstrates that heritable variation for disease prevalence is substantially greater than currently believed, and increases significantly as prevalence decreases.
Article
Psychology, Biological
Charley Xia, Oriol Canela-Xandri, Konrad Rawlik, Albert Tenesa
Summary: Research on 80,889 European couples reveals that approximately 25% of analyzed traits show evidence of partner heritability consistent with indirect genetic effects, impacting traits such as dietary habits, mental health, and disease. These findings indicate that the environment linked to complex traits can be partially explained by the genotype of other individuals, suggesting the importance of exploring new ways to study environmental influences.
NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
(2021)
Article
Biology
Amber M. Makowicz, David Bierbach, Christian Richardson, Kimberly A. Hughes
Summary: Understanding the origin and propagation of individual differences is essential in biology. This study demonstrates that indirect genetic effects (IGE) can influence the phenotypes of individuals who do not personally experience them. Genetically different social environments led to differences in aggression levels and these effects carried over to influence the behavior of naive individuals in new social groups.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Behailu Assefa Wayou, Gezahegne Mamo Kassa, Daniela Pasotto, Teshale Sori, Claudia Maria Tucciarone, Mattia Cecchinato
Summary: Poultry production is on the rise globally, including in Ethiopia, with poultry being a valuable food resource. A survey in Ethiopia investigated the presence of viral pathogens in poultry, showing low circulation likely due to vaccination strategies. Routine diagnostic activities should be planned to monitor pathogen circulation and support disease prevention and production levels, especially in rural and backyard flocks.
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Linor Berezin, Alice Zhabokritsky, Nisha Andany, Adrienne K. Chan, Jose Estrada-Codecido, Andrea Gershon, Philip W. Lam, Jerome A. Leis, Scott MacPhee, Samira Mubareka, Andrew E. Simor, Nick Daneman
Summary: Subjective dyspnoea measures have limited accuracy in diagnosing hypoxaemia in COVID-19 patients, with a sensitivity of 47% and specificity of 80%. Home oxygen saturation monitoring is essential for the safe management of patients with COVID-19.
Article
Clinical Neurology
Matthias Schmitz, Anna Villar-Pique, Peter Hermann, Georgia Escaramis, Miguel Calero, Cao Chen, Niels Kruse, Maria Cramm, Ewa Golanska, Beata Sikorska, Pawel P. Liberski, Maurizio Pocchiari, Peter Lange, Christiane Stehmann, Shannon Sarros, Eulalia Marti, Ines Baldeiras, Isabel Santana, Dana Zakova, Eva Mitrova, Xiao-Ping Dong, Steven Collins, Anna Poleggi, Anna Ladogana, Brit Mollenhauer, Gabor G. Kovacs, Michael D. Geschwind, Raquel Sanchez-Valle, Inga Zerr, Franc Llorens
Summary: This study aimed to analyze the diagnostic accuracy of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers used in the clinical diagnosis of genetic prion diseases. The study included 302 symptomatic cases from 11 prion diagnostic centers, encompassing 36 different pathogenic sequence variations. The results showed variations in the accuracy and associations of biomarkers in different genetic prion diseases.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Samuel V. V. Arsenault, Oksana Riba-Grognuz, DeWayne Shoemaker, Brendan G. G. Hunt, Laurent Keller
Summary: Indirect genetic effects refer to phenotypic variations caused by differences in the genetic composition of social partners. In the fire ant Solenopsis invicta, a social supergene shows significant indirect genetic effects on the regulation of queen number by worker ants. Our study compared the direct and indirect genetic effects of this supergene on gene expression in different tissues and castes, and found that direct genetic effects caused larger and more consistent changes in gene expression across tissues and castes than indirect genetic effects. Moreover, indirect genetic effects mainly influenced gene expression in the abdominal tissues, and were only significant when the genotypic composition of social partners changed throughout the development and adult life of the workers.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Weichen Liu, Ruonan Wang, Yan Li, Shi Zhao, Yaogeng Chen, Yu Zhao
Summary: This study explored the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on the incidence of notifiable infectious diseases (NIDs) in Yinchuan, Northwest China. The results showed that NPIs had a significant inhibitory effect on the incidence of respiratory infectious diseases, intestinal infectious diseases, and sexually transmitted or bloodborne diseases in 2020. The relative reduction in NIDs decreased as the emergency response level changed from level 1 to level 3. These findings provide important guidance for policymakers and stakeholders to take specific actions to control infectious diseases and protect vulnerable populations in the future.
Article
Clinical Neurology
Neil Watson, Jack Kirby, Hatice Kurudzhu, Margaret Leitch, Janet MacKenzie, Blaire Smith-Bathgate, Colin Smith, David Summers, Alison J. E. Green, Suvankar Pal
Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic has had some impact on UK CJD surveillance, but it has not affected case ascertainment or survival. However, there have been disruptions in diagnostic evaluation and clinical care.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Wenyan Liu, Xiangfeng Wang, Haikun Zheng, Bo Jin, Xiaoling Wang, Hongyuan Zha
Summary: This paper proposes a fair differential privacy algorithm (FairDP) to mitigate the disparate impact on each class's model accuracy, by modeling the learning procedure as a bilevel programming problem to integrate differential privacy with fairness and establish a self-adaptive DP mechanism.
INFORMATION SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Physics, Fluids & Plasmas
Abbas K. Rizi, Ali Faqeeh, Arash Badie-Modiri, Mikko Kivela
Summary: Contact tracing via digital tracking applications is an important tool for controlling epidemic spreading. This study shows that the effectiveness of this tool is influenced by various parameters such as degree distributions, number of users, and quarantine failure probabilities. The results indicate that different parameter values can result in major differences in epidemic size and spread probabilities. Degree heterogeneity is particularly important for the epidemic threshold. Both homophily and heterophily with regard to application adoption can have detrimental effects. Overall, the dynamics of epidemics are highly sensitive to parameter values, making the estimation of the effect of digital contact tracing a multidimensional problem.