KENNETH SEEDMAN KENDLER

..The results suggest that for the population studied, additive genetic and unique environmental effects largely account for the variance across the religiosity construct...

..Like species, psychiatric disorders are populations with central paradigmatic and more marginal members. The MPC view is the best current answer to 'What kinds of things are psychiatric disorders?'..

..Prior research suggests that drug abuse (DA) is strongly influenced by both genetic and familial environmental factors. No large-scale adoption study has previously attempted to verify and integrate these findings...

..In this model, genetic risk factors for externalizing psychopathology predict, albeit weakly, higher levels of mental wellbeing...

..In 2002, the authors presented a developmental model for major depression in women. Based on similar methods, they here present an analogous model for men...

..Little is known about how they interrelate in the etiology of depressive illness...

..To describe the structure of genetic and environmental risk factors for four dimensions of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and to understand the source of resemblance of these dimensions and normal personality...

..We have limited knowledge of how these risk factors inter-relate through development...

..In many biomedical disorders, early age at onset (AAO) is an index of high liability to illness which is manifest by an increased risk of illness in relatives. Most but not all prior studies report such a pattern for major depression (MD)...

..We explore each of these two approaches and conclude that although they both have strengths and limitations, our field is not currently ready for a paradigm shift...

..This integration can be best done within an overall framework of explanatory pluralism that values a range of reductive explanations across varying levels of biological and psychological complexity...

..Are the susceptibility genes underlying this peak specific for AD or do they increase risk for externalizing disorders more generally? Can we, in the IASPSAD, replicate prior evidence for linkage to conduct disorder (CD)?..

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..Prior evidence from twin studies suggested genetic moderation of the depressogenic effects of stressful life events (SLEs). Can the specific genes involved in this effect be identified?..

..The phrase "a gene for..." and the preformationist concept of gene action that underlies it are inappropriate for psychiatric disorders...

..It is not known whether genetic effects on major depression are constant across historical cohorts...

..The overlap of environmental risk factors is more modest. Although low levels of IP on average reflect a high genetic propensity for MWB, other independent genetic influences play an important role in producing good mental health...

..Data on use and misuse of six classes of illicit substances by male twin pairs were used to examine whether genetic and shared environmental risk factors for substance use disorders are substance-specific or -nonspecific in their effect...

..Prior studies of twins reared together suggest that regular tobacco use (RTU) is substantially heritable. However, strong social influences on RTU might have biased these results...

..The authors used structural equation modeling to generate a developmental model for the etiology of major depression in women...

..Recent linkage studies suggest that multiple genes are important in the etiology of schizophrenia. The authors examined the hypothesis of whether the clinical variability in schizophrenia is due to genetic heterogeneity...

..This study used data from a general population sample to clarify the dimensions of religiosity and the relationships of these dimensions to risk for lifetime psychiatric and substance use disorders...

..Thus, in Irish families selected for a high density of schizophrenia, M-M LD may be very common within 0.5 cM and frequent up to distances of 2 cM...

..However, the impact of genetic factors on caffeine consumption, heavy use, intoxication, tolerance, and withdrawal is largely unknown...

..In addition, we know little about the relationship of the familial risk factors for premenstrual symptoms and major depression...

..Little is known about the boundaries between major depression and milder subsyndromal depressive states. With respect to depressive symptoms, does DSM-IV "carve nature at its joints"?..

..It was also found to be associated with the dysregulation of postsynaptic dopamine transmission, thus suggesting a potential role in several neuropsychiatric diseases...

..The authors sought to determine whether, in a general population sample, different categories of adverse life events were associated with different patterns of depressive symptoms...

..The pattern of lifetime comorbidity of common psychiatric and substance use disorders results largely from the effects of genetic risk factors...

..031) and QPDTPHASE (chi-square=12.54, p=.028). Also, a significant association between the GABRB3 191 bp allele and the hallucinations factor was detected using QPDTPHASE (chi-square=15.51, p=.030), but not QTDT (chi-square=2.07, p=.560)...

..In this investigation, we explored four GABA receptor genes for their possible associations with genetic risk for anxiety disorders and depression...

..Several possibilities, such as differing risk haplotypes, may explain this finding...

..The event dimensions that preceded mixed MD-GAS episodes were largely the sum of those that preceded pure MD and pure GAS episodes...

..Because of multiple testing, these results do not provide support for HTR2A as a susceptibility gene for psychotic illness, or for suicidal ideation within psychotic illness...

..Peer-group deviance is strongly associated with externalizing behaviors. We have limited knowledge of the sources of individual differences in peer-group deviance...

..Clarification of the nature of the causal links between low social support and depression in women is needed...

..These results suggest that the PTEN gene may be involved in the etiology of both smoking initiation and nicotine dependence...

..We conclude that further investigation of dysbindin is warranted...

..Are there risk factors that associate with illicit drug use or illicit drug abuse/dependence? Is the magnitude of the association the same for use and abuse/dependence? Does this pattern of association differ across categories of drugs?..

..An adoption study of alcoholism suggests that in women, the impact of genetic risk factors become greater in the presence of conflict in the family of origin. Is the same true for cigarette smoking (CS)?..

..Drug use and social discord also appear to have shared genetic factors, but increased levels of drug involvement seem to causally influence social interactions...

..Further studies exploring heritability changes beyond young adulthood would also benefit our understanding of factors influencing heritability of behavioral traits over the lifespan...

..These findings are concordant with prior volumetric twin studies and support radial models of brain evolution...

..Would these results replicate in Norway, a Nordic country with a low prevalence of illicit drug use?..

..The stress-diathesis model may not be an appropriate paradigm for phobic disorders...

..Both genetic and early environmental risk factors can produce long-term increase in the sensitivity of individuals to depressogenic life experiences...

..If schizophrenia susceptibility genes are present on chromosome 1q, their population-wide genetic effects are likely to be small...

..We will review the fields of genetic epidemiology and molecular genetics, providing examples from the literature to illustrate the key concepts emerging from this work...

..The results indicate that DSM-IV NPD criteria perform differently in males and females and across age. Differences in diagnostic rates across groups may not be valid without correcting for measurement non-invariance...

..The evaluation of this candidate gene set against sets selected by other methods suggested its utility in follow-up association studies and in further bioinformatics analysis. We also examined the functional biases of the selected genes...

..Impairment was added as a diagnostic criterion for many psychiatric disorders in DSM-IV. Does the addition of impairment influence only prevalence rates, or does it also introduce new etiological factors into psychiatric diagnoses?..

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..Genetic factors impact substantially both on alcohol consumption (AC) and on the risk for alcohol dependence (AD). However, we know little about the degree to which measures of AC index the genetic risk for AD...

..The cannabinoid receptor 1 (CNR1) gene is 1 of the 2 receptors expressed in the brain. It has been reported to be associated with alcoholism and multiple drug abuse and dependence...

..More functions will also be added. ERGR has a user-friendly web interface with browse and search functions at multiple levels. It is freely available at http://bioinfo.vipbg.vcu.edu/ERGR/...

..We contend that current approaches may obscure interesting phenomena in genetic association data. However, an appropriate approach to examining heterogeneity across studies is lacking...

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..In this study, we followed the apoptotic engulfment pathway involving the MEGF10, GULP1, ABCA1 and ABCA7 genes and tested their association with the disease...

..The sample is diverse and pair resemblance is generally similar to that obtained using interviews or mailed questionnaires...

..However, the opposite effects with nicotine dependence and alcohol abuse/dependence were puzzling and future studies are necessary to resolve this issue...

..We speculate that sex differences in timing of puberty may account for the earlier presence of genetic effects among females...

..The DSM-III-R criteria for major depression (MD) are examined to determine the degree to which latent trait item response models can extract additional useful information...

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..The personality trait of neuroticism (N) is substantially correlated with risk for MD and GAD...

..Reanalysis including total brain volume as a covariate dramatically reduced the total residual variance and disproportionately influenced the additive genetic variance in all regions of interest...

..Gateway and common liabilities models have been employed to explain this relationship. We sought to examine this association using a combination of the discordant twin design and modeling methods...

..The purpose of this article was to determine the extent of overlap between genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the liability to obesity and binge eating...

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..Our analyses suggest that while there may be mean differences in the levels of depressive symptoms across sexes, the genetic and environmental factors that predispose males and females to depressive symptoms are not different...

..These findings also reinforce the validity of composite variables in epidemiological and genetic research...

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..The anxiety disorders exhibit high levels of lifetime comorbidity with one another. Understanding the underlying causes of this comorbidity can provide insight into the etiology of the disorders and inform classification and treatment...

..For some behaviors, the pathway from genes to behavior differs meaningfully in males and females. With respect to the broad patterns of genetic influences on behavior, Homo sapiens appears to be typical of other animal species...

..The subtypes of major depression (MD) remain incompletely understood. While there is consensus about the existence of MD with 'typical' vegetative features, further data are required to evaluate the existence of MD with atypical features...

..We wish to know whether the same set of PD vulnerability factors are assessed by these two methods...

..In this study, we examined, for the first time, the human analog of ASIC1, the amiloride-sensitive cation channel 2 (ACCN2) gene, for its association with genetic risk across a range of anxiety spectrum phenotypes...

..Haplotype-specific expression measurements in post-mortem tissue samples suggested a functional role for DKK2. This evidence notwithstanding, replication is needed before confidence can be placed in these findings...

..As the development of ND requires regular tobacco use (RTU) which in turn requires TI, a conditional approach is necessary...

..The objective of this study is to examine the prevalence, chronology, and possibility of shared familial risk between SUD and ED symptomatology...

..Although Western society is increasingly obesogenic, some individuals maintain low weights. Thin women manifest fewer eating disorders and higher self-esteem. However, little is known about persistently thin men...

..Because women have higher levels of neuroticism and twice the risk of lifetime generalized anxiety disorder of men, gender-specific effects were also explored...

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..However, only 50% of the genetic risk for this factor is shared between the sexes...

..Major depresssion (MD) and coronary artery disease (CAD) frequently co-occur. The mechanisms of comorbidity are uncertain...

..Although genetic risk factors have been found to contribute to dependence on both licit and illicit psychoactive substances, we know little of how these risk factors interrelate...

..Measurement invariance issues, as well as distributions of equal environments traits, should be considered when evaluating the equal environments assumption, in order to produce accurate parameter estimates in twin models...

..In this study, we carried out independent replication and expression studies of the MEGF10 gene...

..Previous research has shown an association between bulimia (BN) and drug use disorders (DUD). The purpose of the present study was to investigate possible influences on the comorbidity between BN and DUD...

..While the nature of common fears changes over development, we do not know whether genetic effects on fear-proneness are developmentally stable or developmentally dynamic...

..0437) and was overrepresented in the ICCSS (P = 0.0177). For both samples, the associated alleles and haplotypes were identical. These data suggested that FBXL21 may be associated with schizophrenia in the Irish samples...

..The AKT1 gene has also been implicated in schizophrenia by association studies and decreased protein expression in the brains of schizophrenic patients...

..While both environmental and genetic factors are important in the etiology of psychoactive substance use (PSU), we know little of how these influences differ through development...

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..Although an obvious environmental factor influencing drug use, the sources of individual differences in drug availability (DA) are unknown...

..The goal of this study was to identify genomic regions containing susceptibility loci for alcohol-related traits...

..Peer group deviance (PGD) is linked strongly to liability to drug use, including cannabis. Our aim was to model the genetic and environmental association, including direction of causation, between PGD and cannabis use (CU)...

..Our aim is to determine whether the genetic and environmental risk factors for cannabis availability also generate variation in cannabis initiation and/or progression to DSM-IV symptoms of abuse...

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..5 to 1.0 centiMorgans and a cooperative, stable population make Ireland ideal for linkage disequilibrium studies of schizophrenia. ..

..Phenotypic analyses of the data will focus on detecting familial resemblance for symptoms, factors and typologies of AD to be used to define putative etiologic subtypes of AD for future linkage analyses. ..

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..abstract_text> ..

..In this competitive renewal, we request 5 further years of support with the primary goals of identifying these pathogenic variant(s) and relating them to the biology of the gene, gene product and disease. ..

..This study has the capacity to address several key and largely unanswered empirical questions about PDs, the answers to which will be critical for proposed revisions in DSM-V. ..

..To conduct this project we have assembled a team of experts in clinical assessment, statistical genetics and molecular genetics...

..We will develop multivariate genetic models including specified environmental risk factors that will provide realistic etiologic models for these disorders that incorporate all major risk factor domains. ..

..We will develop multivariate genetic models including specified environmental risk factors that will provide realistic etiologic models for these disorders that incorporate all major risk factor domains...

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