BIN1 rs744373 variant shows different association with Alzheimer's disease in Caucasian and Asian populations

BACKGROUND

The association between BIN1 rs744373 variant and Alzheimer's disease (AD) had been identified by genome-wide association studies (GWASs) as well as candidate gene studies in Caucasian populations. But in East Asian populations, both positive and negative results had been identified by association studies. Considering the smaller sample sizes of the studies in East Asian, we believe that the results did not have enough statistical power.

RESULTS

We conducted a meta-analysis with 71,168 samples (22,395 AD cases and 48,773 controls, from 37 studies of 19 articles). Based on the additive model, we observed significant genetic heterogeneities in pooled populations as well as Caucasians and East Asians. We identified a significant association between rs744373 polymorphism with AD in pooled populations (P = 5 × 10- 07, odds ratio (OR) = 1.12, and 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.07-1.17) and in Caucasian populations (P = 3.38 × 10- 08, OR = 1.16, 95% CI 1.10-1.22). But in the East Asian populations, the association was not identified (P = 0.393, OR = 1.057, and 95% CI 0.95-1.15). Besides, the regression analysis suggested no significant publication bias. The results for sensitivity analysis as well as meta-analysis under the dominant model and recessive model remained consistent, which demonstrated the reliability of our finding.

CONCLUSIONS

The large-scale meta-analysis highlighted the significant association between rs744373 polymorphism and AD risk in Caucasian populations but not in the East Asian populations.

Opening up new horizons for psychiatric genetics in the Russian Federation: moving toward a national consortium

We provide an overview of the recent achievements in psychiatric genetics research in the Russian Federation and present genotype-phenotype, population, epigenetic, cytogenetic, functional, ENIGMA, and pharmacogenetic studies, with an emphasis on genome-wide association studies. The genetic backgrounds of mental illnesses in the polyethnic and multicultural population of the Russian Federation are still understudied. Furthermore, genetic, genomic, and pharmacogenetic data from the Russian Federation are not adequately represented in the international scientific literature, are currently not available for meta-analyses and have never been compared with data from other populations. Most of these problems cannot be solved by individual centers working in isolation but warrant a truly collaborative effort that brings together all the major psychiatric genetic research centers in the Russian Federation in a national consortium. For this reason, we have established the Russian National Consortium for Psychiatric Genetics (RNCPG) with the aim to strengthen the power and rigor of psychiatric genetics research in the Russian Federation and enhance the international compatibility of this research.The consortium is set up as an open organization that will facilitate collaborations on complex biomedical research projects in human mental health in the Russian Federation and abroad. These projects will include genotyping, sequencing, transcriptome and epigenome analysis, metabolomics, and a wide array of other state-of-the-art analyses. Here, we discuss the challenges we face and the approaches we will take to unlock the huge potential that the Russian Federation holds for the worldwide psychiatric genetics community.

Frequencies of alleles, genotypes and haplotypes of two polymorphisms in the clusterin gene in the Russian elderly population categorized by cognitive performance

This article contains data on the frequencies of alleles, genotypes and haplotypes of the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs2279590 and rs1532278 in the CLU gene in a cohort of normal elderly from the Russian population. The SNPs have been reported to be associated with Alzheimer's disease and cognitive functions in genome-wide and candidate genes association studies. Cognitive performance in sample set was estimated by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). The frequencies of alleles, genotypes and haplotypes of two SNPs were calculated in 3 groups: total sample set, sample set with MoCA score less than 21 (the first quartile) and group with MoCA score more than 24 (the fourth quartile).