pubmedvcu

• Time-Since-Deposition Signatures for Canine Blood Based on Cellular Autofluorescence December 31, 2025
  Animal cruelty investigations can be hampered by not knowing when a biological sample was deposited at a crime scene, i.e., the sample's time-since-deposition (TSD). The goal of this study was to characterize a new signature system for estimating the TSD of canine blood samples based on changes in the autofluorescence spectra of cell populations that […]
  Alysia Townsley
• The relationship between genotype- and phenotype-based estimates of genetic liability to psychiatric disorders, in practice and in theory December 23, 2025
  Genetics as a science has roots in studying phenotypes of relatives, but molecular approaches facilitate direct measurements of genomic variation between individuals. Agricultural and human biomedical research are both emphasizing genotype-based instruments, such as polygenic scores, but unlike in agriculture, there is an emerging consensus that family variables act nearly independently of genotypes in models […]
  M Dybdahl Krebs
• Association of cumulative deficit frailty with brain age and Alzheimer's disease-related brain structure starting in late middle age December 22, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS: CDF was associated with age-related brain structure via strong time-invariant common variance as well as weaker across-time factors. By contrast, the association between CDF and AD-related brain structure was via moderate common variance and was not temporally dynamic. Together, this suggests that CDF is differentially associated with age-related and AD-related brain changes and may […]
  Jack F V Hunt
• MIRAGE: A Bayesian statistical method for gene-level rare-variant analysis incorporating functional annotations December 20, 2025
  Rare-variant analysis is commonly used in whole-exome or genome sequencing studies. Compared to common variants, rare variants tend to have larger effect sizes and often directly point out causal genes. These potential benefits make association analysis with rare variants a priority for human genetics researchers. To improve the power of such studies, numerous methods have […]
  Shengtong Han
• Unique and shared internalizing and externalizing genetic factors associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors: Findings from the adolescent brain cognitive development study December 20, 2025
  CONCLUSION: Internalizing and externalizing genetic liabilities influence STBs through two pathways: one that is mediated by phenotypic internalizing and externalizing and another that is direct from genetic liability to STBs. Further research into targeted prevention strategies for child and adolescent STBs focused on both phenotypic and genetic measures of internalizing and externalizing is recommended.
  Nathaniel S Thomas
• Joint analysis of <em>de novo</em> mutations from autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, congenital heart disease, and other developmental disorders improves detection power and implicates shared molecular pathways and CNS processes December 19, 2025
  Rare exonic variant studies have previously implicated overlapping risk genes and pathways for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders (UDDs), intellectual disability (ID), congenital heart disease (CHD), and schizophrenia (SCZ). Here, we use a two-trait Bayesian integrative analysis approach on 43 287 ASD, UDD/ID, CHD, and SCZ case trios to increase statistical power […]
  Marc Kealhofer
• The relationship in women between genetic liability and the risk of onset of alcohol use disorder while pregnant or rearing an infant, toddler, or preschool child December 14, 2025
  While pregnancy clearly reduces the risk for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) onset, we know less about the impact on AUD risk of having young children and how these effects vary across maternal age and level of maternal AUD genetic risk. Therefore, in 1.2 million parous Swedish women born 1960-1995, we examined those with a first […]
  Kenneth S Kendler
• Th9-arterial endothelial cell crosstalk promotes psoriatic atherosclerosis December 13, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest the Th9^(high) state may represent a novel psoriatic ASCVD endotype that could be targeted using precision approaches to prevent ASCVD in at-risk individuals.
  Ishita Baral
• Mapping the genetic landscape across 14 psychiatric disorders December 10, 2025
  Psychiatric disorders display high levels of comorbidity and genetic overlap^(1,2), challenging current diagnostic boundaries. For disorders for which diagnostic separation has been most debated, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder³, genomic methods have revealed that the majority of genetic signal is shared⁴. While over a hundred pleiotropic loci have been identified by recent cross-disorder analyses⁵, […]
  Andrew D Grotzinger
• Investigating the bidirectional association between alcohol use and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a population from the United States November 29, 2025
  CONCLUSION: Our results suggest complex and potentially bidirectional associations between alcohol and suicide phenotypes, but do not provide strong evidence for a causal pathway.
  Séverine Lannoy
• A Genetic Risk Adoption Design for Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders November 26, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Using a more incisive measure of genetic effects, the novel adoption design used in this cohort study provides findings broadly similar to traditional adoption models. Rearing effects were strongest for substance use disorders, modest for internalizing disorders, and absent for severe disorders. Indirect genetic effects in the father on offspring risk were […]
  Kenneth S Kendler
• Latent class analysis of symptoms across schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar I disorder November 24, 2025
  Data-driven phenotypes have the potential to accelerate biomedical research but must be vetted thoroughly for robustness, interpretability, and generalizability. This study sought to create and evaluate the predictive validity of empirical phenotypes derived from assessments of signs and symptoms of psychopathology collected in a large cohort of patients using a validated semi-structured clinical interview based […]
  Dana M Lapato
• Symptoms of problematic alcohol use differ in their genetic associations with comorbid internalizing, externalizing, and neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders November 24, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol-related consequences share unique genetic underpinnings with multiple psychiatric conditions apart from what is shared with their latent problematic alcohol use factor. Thus, alcohol-related consequences may unduly reflect dysfunction from comorbid psychiatric conditions or related third variables.
  Frances L Wang
• Measurement Error and Power in Family-Based Extensions to Mendelian Randomization November 3, 2025
  Mendelian Randomization (MR) has become an important tool for causal inference in the health sciences. It takes advantage of the random segregation and independent assortment of alleles to control for background confounding factors. In brief, the method works by using genetic variants as instrumental variables, but it depends on the assumption of exclusion restriction, i.e., […]
  Luis F S Castro-de-Araujo
• Sex-based differences across the stages of the addiction cycle among adults with severe alcohol use disorder November 3, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS: Using a sex-informed approach is critical for the development and validation of AUD phenotyping tools as well as integration of phenotyping into AUD clinical trials.
  Anna Beth Parlier-Ahmad
• Delineating trajectories of alcohol consumption and alcohol problems from adolescence to young adulthood: An integrated assessment of genetic, familial, and psychosocial factors October 31, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study indicate that genetic, familial, and personality traits related to externalization were associated with the initial level of drinking or drinking-related problems, whereas fewer variables were associated with the change in drinking or drinking-related problems over time. These findings suggest that these variables can be used to identify high-risk individuals for […]
  Hui G Cheng
• Bullying Perpetration and Depressive Symptoms: A Causal Investigation of TwinLife Data October 27, 2025
  CONCLUSION: It was found that depressive symptoms and bullying perpetration share genetic influences.
  Jacyra Azevedo Paiva de Araujo
• Transmission of Major Depression and Bipolar Disorder to Alcohol and Other Drug Use Disorders in a Swedish National Sample: Strongest Effects From Mothers to Daughters October 23, 2025
  CONCLUSIONS: Findings demonstrate familial transmission of MDD and BD in parents to AUD and DUD in offspring. Affected mothers may be particularly influential. When sex-specific transmission occurred, it was consistently strongest from mother to daughter.
  Kathryn Polak
• Rüdin's Unpublished Family Study From the Early 1920s: "On the Inheritance of Manic-Depressive Insanity" October 18, 2025
  Ernst Rüdin, an important and controversial figure in the history of psychiatric genetics, published only one major empirical study on siblings of dementia praecox (DP) probands in 1916. He conducted a parallel study of siblings of probands with manic-depressive insanity (MDI), but the resulting monograph, written in the early 1920s, was left incomplete and unpublished. […]
  Kenneth S Kendler
• The nature of the relation between mental well-being and ill-being October 16, 2025
  Research on mental health has traditionally separated the study of ill-being, including clinically defined mental and behavioural disorders and subthreshold problems, from the study of well-being, which encompasses factors such as life satisfaction and positive affect. Although previous reviews of studies primarily using self-report scales indicate that ill-being and well-being are distinct yet interconnected constructs, […]
  Christian K Tamnes