Alcohol use disorder and IQ: Does social context matter?

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Recent research suggests that lower IQ and cognitive performance link to higher alcohol use disorder risk, but education and societal factors can amplify or reduce this vulnerability, not genetics alone.

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Is depression a cause or consequence? Using genetics to untangle causal relationships

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This study used Mendelian randomisation to test potential causal relationships between depression and 137 traits. Depression liability was linked to somatic diseases, inflammation, suicide risk, insomnia, lower cognitive function and functional impairments, though findings require validation.

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Genes, brains and self-harm: New study links adolescent risk to biology and disadvantage

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Self-harm is common among adolescents and a strong predictor of suicide risk. A major new cohort study in the British Journal of Psychiatry explores how genetic risk and brain differences might explain who’s most at risk, and why.

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Shorter sleep and depression: what role do our genes play?

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Nick Donnelly discusses how one’s genetic predisposition to shorter sleep is associated with the onset of depression in older adults.

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Genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with changes in heart structure and function

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Nadine Parker and Ole Andreassen summarise a recent UK population-based cohort study, which looks at the impact of polygenic risk for schizophrenia on cardiac structure and function in over 32,000 people.

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New review suggests that PTSD may be a modifiable risk factor for dementia

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Anjuli Kaul blogs about a new systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies, which explores the relationship between PTSD and all-cause dementia.

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Increased risk for physical illness in schizophrenia is not caused by genetic liability for the disorder: according to new data-linkage study

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Dolly Sud appraises a recent data linkage study on the impact of schizophrenia genetic liability on the association between schizophrenia and physical illness.

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Who gets bullied? Using genetic information to identify individual vulnerabilities

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Lucy Bowes explores a multi-polygenic score approach to identifying individual vulnerabilities associated with the risk of bullying, which suggests that depression, ADHD, risk taking, BMI and intelligence are independently associated with exposure to bullying.

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New genes implicated in Alzheimer’s disease #LetsTalkMentalHealthII

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Byron Creese writes a #LetsTalkMentalHealthII blog about a recent genome-wide meta-analysis which identifies new loci and functional pathways influencing Alzheimer’s disease risk.

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Genetic predictors of depression trajectories in adolescence

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Megan Skelton explores a study that uses polygenic scores in the context of longitudinal developmental data, to characterise developmental trajectories and the role of neuropsychiatric genetic risk variants in early-onset depression.

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