George Smith

1 month ago | nature.com | Christina Dardani |Hannah J. Jones |Evie Stergiakouli |Jakob Grove |Andrew McIntosh |Andrew Mcintosh | +3 more

AbstractImmune dysfunction is implicated in the aetiology of psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, and neurodegenerative conditions, but the issue of causality remains unclear impeding attempts to develop new interventions. Using genomic data on protein and gene expression across blood and brain, we assessed evidence of a potential causal role for 736 immune response-related biomarkers on 7 neuropsychiatric conditions by applying Mendelian randomization (MR) and genetic colocalisation analyses.

Aug 11, 2024 | medrxiv.org | Laxmi Bhatta |Paul Jones |Martin Tesli |George Smith

OEN reports having received funding from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for a review assignment. GDS reports a Scientific Advisory Board Membership for Relation Therapeutics and Insitro. MFVV, LB, PRJ, MT, NMD and BMB declare no conflict of interest to disclose. The K. G. Jebsen Center for Genetic Epidemiology is financed by Stiftelsen Kristian Gerhard Jebsen and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, NTNU, Norway.

Jul 17, 2024 | nature.com | Amanda Hughes |Fartein Ask Torvik |Elsje van Bergen |Elizabeth C Corfield |Ole A. Andreassen |Eivind Ystrom | +3 more

AbstractChildren born to parents with fewer years of education are more likely to have depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but it is unclear to what extent these associations are causal. We estimated the effect of parents’ educational attainment on children’s depressive, anxiety, and ADHD traits at age 8 years, in a sample of 40,879 Norwegian children born in 1998–2009 and their parents.

Jul 3, 2024 | nature.com | Caitlin Carey |Robbee Wedow |Duncan Palmer |Masahiro Kanai |Konrad J Karczewski |Samuel Bryant | +6 more

AbstractData within biobanks capture broad yet detailed indices of human variation, but biobank-wide insights can be difficult to extract due to complexity and scale. Here, using large-scale factor analysis, we distill hundreds of variables (diagnoses, assessments and survey items) into 35 latent constructs, using data from unrelated individuals with predominantly estimated European genetic ancestry in UK Biobank.

Apr 22, 2024 | bmj.com | George Smith

Dear EditorIn 2019 the BMJ published a paper [1] that concluded that amongst people who had ever smoked, and who were below average weight, gaining weight would reduce their mortality risk. The causal claim was clear and direct. For some time the authors and the BMJ have known that the data presented to support this damaging public health message is, essentially, spurious. The paper applied exactly the same non-linear mendelian randomization (NLMR) approach as has also been applied to vitamin D2.