Genome-wide haplotype association study identifies the FRMD4A gene as a risk locus for Alzheimer's disease

Recently, several genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have led to the discovery of nine new loci of genetic susceptibility in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the landscape of the AD genetic susceptibility is far away to be complete and in addition to single-SNP (single-nucleotide polymorphism) analyses as performed in conventional GWAS, complementary strategies need to be applied to overcome limitations inherent to this type of approaches. We performed a genome-wide haplotype association (GWHA) study in the EADI1 study (n=2025 AD cases and 5328 controls) by applying a sliding-windows approach. After exclusion of loci already known to be involved in AD (APOE, BIN1 and CR1), 91 regions with suggestive haplotype effects were identified. In a second step, we attempted to replicate the best suggestive haplotype associations in the GERAD1 consortium (2820 AD cases and 6356 controls) and observed that 9 of them showed nominal association. In a third step, we tested relevant haplotype associations in a combined analysis of five additional case-control studies (5093 AD cases and 4061 controls). We consistently replicated the association of a haplotype within FRMD4A on Chr.10p13 in all the data set analyzed (OR: 1.68; 95% CI: (1.43-1.96); P=1.1 × 10 -10). We finally searched for association between SNPs within the FRMD4A locus and Aβ plasma concentrations in three independent non-demented populations (n=2579). We reported that polymorphisms were associated with plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio (best signal, P=5.4 × 10 -7). In conclusion, combining both GWHA study and a conservative three-stage replication approach, we characterised FRMD4A as a new genetic risk factor of AD

Osteogenicity of titanium implants coated with calcium phosphate or collagen type-I in osteoporotic rats

Item does not contain fulltextThis study hypothesized that modification of titanium implant surface, e.g. by the deposition of inorganic/organic coatings, can significantly improve the implant-bone response compared in osteoporotic vs. healthy conditions. After osteoporosis was induced in 15 female Wistar rats by ovariectomy (OVX) and confirmed by in vivo micro-CT analysis, implants coated with calcium phosphate (CaP) or collagen type-I and non-coated implants were placed into bilateral femoral condyles. Another 15 sham-operated rats served as controls. Twelve weeks after implantation, micro-CT bone volume (%BV) and histomorphometrical bone area (%BA) were lower around control implants in osteoporotic rats (BV = 60.4%, BA = 43.8%) compared to sham-operated rats (BV = 74.0%, BA = 62.0%). Interestingly, CaP and collagen type-I surface coatings enhanced bone-to-implant contact (%BIC) compared to non-coated implants in osteoporosis (51.9%, 58.2%) as well as in sham-operated (69.7%, 64.4%) groups. The study confirmed that an osteoporotic condition has a significant effect on the amount of bone present in close vicinity to implants. Evidently, the use of osteogenic surface coatings has a favorable effect on the bone implant interface in both osteoporotic and sham-operated conditions

Hydroxyapatite nanocrystals functionalized with alendronate as bioactive components for bone implant coatings to decrease osteoclastic activity

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Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Gaussian Models with Missing Data : Eight Equivalent Formulations

In this paper we derive the maximum likelihood problem for missing data from a Gaussian model. We present in total eight different equivalent formulations of the resulting optimization problem, four out of which are nonlinear least squares formulations. Among these formulations are also formulations based on the expectation-maximization algorithm. Expressions for the derivatives needed in order to solve the optimization problems are presented. We also present numerical comparisons for two of the formulations for an ARMAX model