Publications

These data indicate that improving adherence to healthy dietary patterns could attenuate the genetic association with weight gain. Moreover, the beneficial effect of improved diet quality on weight management was particularly pronounced in people at high genetic risk for obesity.

OBJECTIVE— We sought to evaluate whether maternal diabetes or weight status attenuates a previously reported beneficial effect of breast-feeding on childhood obesity. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS— Growing Up Today Study (GUTS) participants were offspring of women who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study II. In the present study, 15,253 girls and boys (aged 9–14 years in 1996) were included. Maternal diabetes and weight status and infant feeding were obtained by maternal self-report. We defined maternal overweight as BMI ≥25 kg/m2. Childhood obesity, from self-reported height and weight, was based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitions as normal, at risk for overweight, or overweight. Maternal status categories were nondiabetes/normal weight, nondiabetes/overweight, or diabetes. Logistic regression models used generalized estimating equations to account for nonindependence between siblings. RESULTS— For all subjects combined, breast-feeding was associated with reduced overweight (compared with normal weight) in childhood. Compared with exclusive use of formula, the odds ratio (OR) for exclusive breast-feeding was 0.66 (95% CI 0.53–0.82), adjusted for age, sex, and Tanner stage. Results did not differ according to maternal status (nondiabetes/normal weight OR 0.73 [95% CI 0.49–1.09]; nondiabetes/overweight 0.75 [0.57–0.99]; and diabetes 0.62 [0.24–1.60]). Further adjustment for potential confounders attenuated results, but results remained consistent across strata of maternal status (P value for interaction was 0.50). CONCLUSIONS— Breast-feeding was inversely associated with childhood obesity regardless of maternal diabetes status or weight status. These data provide support for all mothers to breast-feed their infants to reduce the risk for childhood overweight.

Biomolecular recognition can be stubborn; changes in the structures of associating molecules, or the environments in which they associate, often yield compensating changes in enthalpies and entropies of binding, and no net change in affinities. This phenomenon—termed enthalpy/entropy (H/S) compensation—hinders efforts in biomolecular design, and its incidence—often a surprise to experimentalists—makes interactions between biomolecules difficult to predict. Although characterizing H/S compensation requires experimental care, it is unquestionably a real phenomenon that has, from an engineering perspective, useful physical origins. Studying H/S compensation can help illuminate the still-murky roles of water and dynamics in biomolecular recognition and self-assembly. This review summarizes known sources of H/S compensation (real and perceived) and lays out a conceptual framework for understanding and dissecting—and, perhaps, avoiding or exploiting—this phenomenon in biophysical systems.

Model heterogeneous surfaces consisting of alternating and parallel 2.55 μm hydrophobic and 2.45 μm hydrophilic strips were prepared on a gold film by patterning self-assembled monolayers of hexadecanethiol and mercaptohexadecanoic acid using an elastomer stamp. The advancing and receding contact angles were measured for liquid drops (distilled water, buffer solutions with pH = 8.0, 10.0, and 11.0, ethylene glycol, glycerol, and formamide) placed on this specially prepared surface. Contortion of the three-phase contact line is a significant property of these systems. Both contact angles, advancing and receding, were 2−10° lower when measured with the strips normal to the three-phase contact line than those measured with the strips tangential to the three-phase contact line. For most of the systems examined, experimental contact angles, when measured for the liquid drop edge situated along the strips of the model heterogeneous surface (noncontorted three-phase contact line), were in an agreement with theoretical values calculated from the Cassie equation. Also, for most of the systems examined, there was an agreement of experimental contact angles, as measured for the liquid drop edge located normal to the strips (i.e., when the three-phase contact line was contorted), with theory calculated from the modified Cassie equation, including the line-tension term. Only in selected cases could the theory as expressed by the Cassie equation or the modified Cassie equation not predict the experimental contact angles. These were the systems in which the liquid phase interacted strongly with COOH groups of the self-assembled monolayer and completely spread over this hydrophilic portion of the surface.

Abstract Background Disc degeneration (DD) is a common condition that progresses with aging. Although the events leading to DD are not well understood, a significant genetic influence has been found. This study was undertaken to assess the association between relevant candidate gene polymorphisms and moderate DD in a well-defined and characterized cohort of young adults. Focusing on young age can be valuable in determining genetic predisposition to DD. Methods We investigated the associations of existing candidate genes for DD among 538 young adults with a mean age of 19 belonging to the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort. Nineteen single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in 16 genes were genotyped. We evaluated lumbar DD using the modified Pfirrmann classification and a 1.5-T magnetic resonance scanner for imaging. Results Of the 538 individuals studied, 46% had no degeneration, while 54% had DD and 51% of these had moderate DD. The risk of DD was significantly higher in subjects with an allele G of IL6 SNPs rs1800795 (OR 1.45, 95% CI 1.07-1.96) and rs1800797 (OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.02-1.85) in the additive inheritance model. The role of IL6 was further supported by the haplotype analysis, which resulted in an association between the GGG haplotype (SNPs rs1800797, rs1800796 and rs1800795) and DD with an OR of 1.51 (95% CI 1.11-2.04). In addition, we observed an association between DD and two other polymorphisms, SKT rs16924573 (OR 0.27 95% CI 0.07-0.96) and CILP rs2073711 in women (OR 2.04, 95% CI 1.07-3.89). Conclusion Our results indicate that IL6 , SKT and CILP are involved in the etiology of DD among young adults.

Migraine is a common comorbidity among individuals with bipolar disorder, but the underlying mechanisms for this co-occurrence are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic background of bipolar patients with and without migraine.We performed a genome-wide association analysis contrasting 460 bipolar migraneurs with 914 bipolar patients without migraine from the Bipolar Genome Study (BiGS).We identified one genome-wide significant association between migraine in bipolar disorder patients and rs1160720, an intronic single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the NBEA gene (P=2.97 × 10(-8), OR: 1.82, 95% CI: 1.47-2.25), although this was not replicated in a smaller sample of 289 migraine cases.Our study is based on self-reported migraine.NBEA encodes neurobeachin, a scaffolding protein primarily expressed in the brain and involved in trafficking of vesicles containing neurotransmitter receptors. This locus has not previously been implicated in migraine per se. We found no evidence of association in data from the GWAS migraine meta-analysis consortium (n=118,710 participants) suggesting that the association might be specific to migraine co-morbid with bipolar disorder.