The XVth World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics, October 7–11, 2007: Rapporteur summaries of oral presentations

Abstract

The World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG) has become an annual event since the early 1990's sponsored by the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG). Each year the latest published and unpublished findings are aired for discussion by representatives of the majority of research programs on this topic world-wide. The 2007 congress was held in New York City and attracted over 1000 researchers. The topics emphasized included results from whole genome association studies, the significance of copy number variation and the important contributions of epigenetic events to psychiatric disorders. There were over 20 oral sessions devoted to these and other topics of interest. Young investigator recipients of travel awards served as rapporteurs to summarize sessions and these summaries follow.

Common genetic variants on 5p14.1 associate with autism spectrum disorders

“…Although these reported variants indicate a role for rare genomic variation in a proportion of families, no common variants have been previously associated with ASDs in genome-wide studies. The latter is consistent with reports from previous genome-wide association studies of other neuropsychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder14,15, schizophrenia16 and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder16, all of which have failed to identify common susceptibility loci with genome-wide significance, when individual data sets with small sample sizes were analysed. However, recent meta-analysis reported evidence for common variants in both schizophrenia17 and bipolar disorder18, suggesting that the search for common genetic variation that confer susceptibility to ASDs may benefit from the combined analysis of several studies.…”

Selected rapporteur summaries from the XX world congress of psychiatric genetics, Hamburg, Germany, october 14–18, 2012

“…Rapporteurs for these sessions were student travel awardees who were assigned to summarize individual sessions and their discussions. Similar accounts of the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 congresses held in New York City, Osaka, Japan, San Diego, California, Athens, Greece, and Washington, D.C. were previously published (Alkelai et al 2008, Bergen et al, 2009, Amstadter et al, 2010, Bergen SE et al, 2011, and Dai N et al, 2012. )…”

Summaries of plenary, symposia, and oral sessions at the XXII World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics, Copenhagen, Denmark, 12–16 October 2014

“…They were tasked to summarize individual sessions as well as relevant discussions. Similar accounts of the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 congress held in New York (New York), Osaka (Japan), San Diego (California), Athens (Greece), Washington (District of Colombia), Hamburg (Germany), and Boston (Massachusetts), have been published previously (Alkelai et al, 2008; Bergen et al, 2009, 2011; Amstadter et al, 2010; Dai et al, 2012; Anderson-Schmidt et al, 2013, Akpudo et al, 2014).…”