Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of dementia. The risk effect becomes weaker provided that participants take sulfonylureas or metformin rather than thiazolidinediones for a longer period.

Bipolar disorder families in which psychotic symptoms cluster may carry susceptibility genes on chromosomal regions 13q31 and 22q12. Replication should be attempted in similar families and perhaps in schizophrenia families in which mood symptoms cluster because these overlapping phenotypes may correlate most closely with the putative susceptibility genes. The localization of the 22q12 finding particularly encourages further study of this region.

No abstract

Evidence from twin and family studies supports a genetic etiology for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The purpose of this study was to test whether a major gene is implicated in a proportion of families with OCD. Complex segregation analyses of 153 families (80 case and 73 control), ascertained in the Johns Hopkins OCD Family Study, provided strong evidence for a major gene. A Mendelian-dominant model, with significant sex effects and with residual familial effects, best explained the observed data. Stratification of the sample by the sex of probands provided further evidence of heterogeneity with respect to familial aggregation. Segregation analyses of 86 families with a female proband and of the 67 families with a male proband suggested that a Mendelian-dominant model with familial residual effects was the most parsimonious model explaining the inheritance of OCD in both subgroups.

Schizophrenia is increasingly conceived as a disorder of brain network organization or dysconnectivity syndrome. Functional MRI (fMRI) networks in schizophrenia have been characterized by abnormally random topology. We tested the hypothesis that network randomization is an endophenotype of schizophrenia and therefore evident also in nonpsychotic relatives of patients. Head movement-corrected, resting-state fMRI data were acquired from 25 patients with schizophrenia, 25 first-degree relatives of patients, and 29 healthy volunteers. Graphs were used to model functional connectivity as a set of edges between regional nodes. We estimated the topological efficiency, clustering, degree distribution, resilience, and connection distance (in millimeters) of each functional network. The schizophrenic group demonstrated significant randomization of global network metrics (reduced clustering, greater efficiency), a shift in the degree distribution to a more homogeneous form (fewer hubs), a shift in the distance distribution (proportionally more long-distance edges), and greater resilience to targeted attack on network hubs. The networks of the relatives also demonstrated abnormal randomization and resilience compared with healthy volunteers, but they were typically less topologically abnormal than the patients' networks and did not have abnormal connection distances. We conclude that schizophrenia is associated with replicable and convergent evidence for functional network randomization, and a similar topological profile was evident also in nonpsychotic relatives, suggesting that this is a systems-level endophenotype or marker of familial risk. We speculate that the greater resilience of brain networks may confer some fitness advantages on nonpsychotic relatives that could explain persistence of this endophenotype in the population.psychosis | dysconnectivity | graph theory | brain network | hubs S chizophrenia is increasingly conceived as a brain dysconnectivity syndrome or disorder of brain network organization (1-4). Various methods have been used to demonstrate abnormal structural or functional connectivity between brain regions in patients with schizophrenia. Specifically, several recent studies have used graph theory to measure the topological pattern of connections (or edges) between regional nodes in large-scale networks derived from neuroimaging data (5-12).The results to date of graph theoretical studies of schizophrenia are not entirely consistent, but there is some convergence around the concept of topological randomization (9, 13). For example, human brain networks (and many other complex, real-life networks) generally have a small-world topology that can be understood as intermediate between the regular, highly clustered organization of a lattice and the globally efficient organization of a random graph. Three independent functional MRI (fMRI) studies have shown that the functional brain networks of patients with schizophrenia are relatively shifted toward the random end of this small-world spectrum, i.e., the...

Background: Chronic schizophrenic patients have been reported as having higher osteoporosis prevalence. Survey the bone mass among schizophrenic patients and compare with that of the local community population and reported data of the same country to figure out the distribution of bone mass among schizophrenic patients.

Clozapine-associated urinary incontinence may be persistent in some patients, and it should be cautiously monitored in every patient taking clozapine.

The fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith) is a severely destructive pest native to the Americas, but has now become an alien invasive pest in China, and causes significant economic loss. Therefore, in order to make effective management strategies, it is highly essential to understand genomic architecture and its genetic background. In this study, we assembled two chromosome scale genomes of the fall armyworm, representing one male and one female individual procured from Yunnan province of China. The genome sizes were identified as 542.42 Mb with N50 of 14.16 Mb, and 530.77 Mb with N50 of 14.89 Mb for the male and female FAW, respectively. We predicted about 22,201 genes in the male genome. We found the expansion of cytochrome P450 and glutathione s-transferase gene families, which are functionally related to the intensified detoxification and pesticides tolerance. Further population analyses of corn strain (C strain) and rice strain (R strain) revealed that the Chinese fall armyworm was most likely invaded from Africa. These strain information, genome features and possible invasion source described in this study will be extremely important for making effective strategies to manage the fall armyworms.