Shorter sleep and depression: what role do our genes play?

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Nick Donnelly discusses how one’s genetic predisposition to shorter sleep is associated with the onset of depression in older adults.

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Genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with changes in heart structure and function

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Nadine Parker and Ole Andreassen summarise a recent UK population-based cohort study, which looks at the impact of polygenic risk for schizophrenia on cardiac structure and function in over 32,000 people.

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New review suggests that PTSD may be a modifiable risk factor for dementia

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Anjuli Kaul blogs about a new systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies, which explores the relationship between PTSD and all-cause dementia.

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Increased risk for physical illness in schizophrenia is not caused by genetic liability for the disorder: according to new data-linkage study

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Dolly Sud appraises a recent data linkage study on the impact of schizophrenia genetic liability on the association between schizophrenia and physical illness.

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Who gets bullied? Using genetic information to identify individual vulnerabilities

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Lucy Bowes explores a multi-polygenic score approach to identifying individual vulnerabilities associated with the risk of bullying, which suggests that depression, ADHD, risk taking, BMI and intelligence are independently associated with exposure to bullying.

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New genes implicated in Alzheimer’s disease #LetsTalkMentalHealthII

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Byron Creese writes a #LetsTalkMentalHealthII blog about a recent genome-wide meta-analysis which identifies new loci and functional pathways influencing Alzheimer’s disease risk.

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Genetic predictors of depression trajectories in adolescence

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Megan Skelton explores a study that uses polygenic scores in the context of longitudinal developmental data, to characterise developmental trajectories and the role of neuropsychiatric genetic risk variants in early-onset depression.

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Genetics of depression: understanding risk and improving treatment

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Douglas Levinson on a genome-wide meta-analysis of depression in 807,553 individuals, which identifies 102 independent variants relating to the genetics of depression.

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What can genetics tell us about the link between cannabis and schizophrenia? #MHQT

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Suzi Gage summarises a recent GWAS of lifetime cannabis use, which reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia. Interesting new evidence ahead of our Mental Health Question Time #MHQT event in London tomorrow.

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Risk factors and peripheral biomarkers for schizophrenia spectrum disorders

This 'umbrella review' aimed to systematically appraise the meta-analyses of observational studies on risk factors and peripheral biomarkers for schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Marcus Munafo considers the findings of a systematic review of meta-analyses of observational studies, which looks at risk factors and peripheral biomarkers for psychotic disorders on the schizophrenia spectrum.

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