Classical genetic research approaches to determining the genetic contribution to a multifactorial condition have been used to quantify the proportion of addiction and substance abuse that is a result of heritable genetic factors versus environmental factors. Family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies have all been applied for individuals and families with a history of addiction and subs...

Background. Screening of children who are household contacts of tuberculosis (TB) cases is universally recommended but rarely implemented in TB endemic setting. This paper aims to summarise published data of the prevalence of TB infection and disease among child contacts in South East Asia. Methods. Search strategies were developed to identify all published studies from South East Asia of house...

There has been a debate since the 1980’s whether delusional depression or psychotic depression is a distinct psychiatric disorder. (Glassman & Roose, 1981) Currently, DSM-IVTR classifies psychotic symptoms in patients with major depressive disorder as a severity specifier. However, researchers in the area of major depressive disorder, with psychotic features (PMD) believe that PMD is a distinct...

We examined sex differences in familial resemblance for a broad range of behavioral, psychiatric and health related phenotypes (122 complex traits) in children and adults. There is a renewed interest in the importance of genotype by sex interaction in, for example, genome-wide association (GWA) studies of complex phenotypes. If different genes play a role across sex, GWA studies should consider...

Blood pressure (BP) is a heritable trait with multiple environmental and genetic contributions, with current heritability estimates from twin and family studies being ~ 40%. Here, we use genome-wide polymorphism data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study to estimate BP heritability from genomic relatedness among cohort members. We utilized data on 6,365,596 and 9,578,528 gen...

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication as well as repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. The consequences of this disorder for everyday life adaptation are extremely variable. Family studies have shown that autism runs in families and twin studies indicate that the basis of that familial aggregation is genetic. Despite compellin...

A sizeable fraction of multiple myeloma (MM) is expected to be explained by heritable factors. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified a number of common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) influencing MM risk. While these SNPs only explain a small proportion of the genetic risk it is unclear how much is left to be detected by other, yet to be identified, common S...

BACKGROUND Screening of household contacts of tuberculosis (TB) patients is a recommended strategy to improve early case detection. While it has been widely implemented in low prevalence countries, the most optimal protocols for contact investigation in high prevalence, low resource settings is yet to be determined. This study evaluated contact investigation interventions in eleven lower and mi...

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a severe autoimmune connective tissue disease. Over the years, evidence for a genetic background of SSc susceptibility has clearly accumulated. This article aims to provide an extensive overview of genetics in SSc research. We discuss indicators for a genetic component present in SSc, family studies, chromosomal aberrances, the involvement of the HLA region and multi...

BACKGROUND A previous Australian population-based breast cancer case-control study found indirect evidence that control participation, although high, was not random. We hypothesized that unaffected sisters may provide a more appropriate comparison group than unrelated population controls. METHODS Three population-based case-control-family studies of breast cancer in women of white European or...