A new high-resolution genome-wide association study (GWAS) in Italy has revealed genetic variations that can affect autoimmune disease propensity. The research has increased the number of genetic variants known to be involved in the regulation of specific immune cell types, and identified novel targets for treatment. […]
A study published in the Nature Communications journal propose an MR method, MR-link, that accounts for unobserved pleiotropy and LD by leveraging information from individual-level data, even when only one eQTL variant is present. Inference of causality between gene expression and complex traits using Mendelian randomization (MR) is confounded by pleiotropy and linkage [...]
LinDA is a tool that, for a given variant, determines all the variants in Linkage Disequilibrium and whether they intersect with other association studies. A large manually curated collection of QTL and association studies can be easily interrogated and results are displayed with interactive plots and tables. LinDA offers also complementary tools, such as [...]
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports an important new mechanism of predisposition to two autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis (MS) and systemic lupus erythematosus (Lupus). The study, supported by the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Foundation (FISM) and the National Institute on Aging of the NIH, was carried out by an international team [...]
A team of international researchers from the SardiNIA/ProgeNIA study, have discovered new genes associated with height, risk factors for heart disease, and regulation of hemoglobin levels, using advanced whole-genome sequencing technology. Findings detected in general population individuals from 4 Sardinian villages assessed in the SardiNIA cohort study are presented in a series of papers in [...]
Numerous studies have reported that certain diseases and quantitative variables of biomedical relevance such as height, or body mass index or levels of sugar in the blood are, to some extent, inherited. According to a team of international researchers led by Francesco Cucca, director of the National Research Council’s (CNR) Institute of Genetic and Biomedical [...]
By studying Y chromosome DNA from a large group of men on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, scientists not only have reconstructed the timing and course of much of the prehistoric events in Sardinia but also provided important information about early peopling in Europe and even about the time of origin of modern humans. [...]