Shaun Purcell

TL;DR: The 'hypoxic burden', an easily derived signal from overnight sleep study, predicts CVD mortality across populations and suggests that not only the frequency but the depth and duration of sleep related upper airway obstructions, are important disease characterizing features.

TL;DR: A genome-wide association study among 2,323 individuals with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and 9,013 control subjects and evaluated all SNPs with P < 1.0 × 10−4 revealed genome- wide significance for one SNP, rs12608932, which maps to a haplotype block within the boundaries of UNC13A, which regulates the release of neurotransmitters at neuromuscular synapses.

TL;DR: Performing GWAS for self-reported habitual sleep duration in adults, supported by accelerometer-derived measures, and identifying genetic correlation with psychiatric and metabolic traits provides insights into the genetic basis for inter-individual variation in sleep duration implicating multiple biological pathways.

TL;DR: Although no SNPs were identified to be associated with OCD at a genome-wide significant level in the combined trio–case–control sample, a significant enrichment of methylation QTLs and frontal lobe expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) was observed within the top-ranked SNPs, suggesting these top signals may have a broad role in gene expression in the brain, and possibly in the etiology of OCD.

TL;DR: The findings are consistent with animal experiments and human correlational studies documenting the harmful effects of extreme stress on brain development and programs that successfully reduce domestic violence should also have beneficial effects on children's cognitive development.