Association of plasma GFAP with elevated brain amyloid is dependent on severity of white matter lesions in an Asian cognitively impaired cohort

INTRODUCTION: While elevated blood glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) has been associated with brain amyloid pathology, whether this association occurs in populations with high cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) concomitance remains unclear. METHODS: Using a Singapore-based cohort of cognitively impaired subjects, we assessed associations between plasma GFAP and neuroimaging measures of brain amyloid and CSVD, including white matter hyperintensities (WMH). We also examined the diagnostic performance of plasma GFAP in detecting brain amyloid beta positivity (Aβ+). RESULTS: When stratified by WMH status, elevated brain amyloid was associated with higher plasma GFAP only in the WMH– group (β = 0.383; P &lt; 0.001). The diagnostic performance of plasma GFAP in identifying Aβ+ was significantly higher in the WMH– group (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.896) than in the WMH+ group (AUC = 0.712, P = 0.008). DISCUSSION: The biomarker utility of plasma GFAP in detecting brain amyloid pathology is dependent on the severity of concomitant WMH. Highlight: Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)’s association with brain amyloid is unclear in populations with high cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). Plasma GFAP was measured in a cohort with CSVD and brain amyloid. Plasma GFAP was better in detecting amyloid in patients with low CSVD versus high CSVD. Biomarker utility of GFAP in detecting brain amyloid depends on the severity of CSVD.</p

Common variants in SOX-2 and congenital cataract genes contribute to age-related nuclear cataract

Nuclear cataract is the most common type of age-related cataract and a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Age-related nuclear cataract is heritable (h2 = 0.48), but little is known about specific genetic factors underlying this condition. Here we report findings from the largest to date multi-ethnic meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (discovery cohort N = 14,151 and replication N = 5299) of the International Cataract Genetics Consortium. We confirmed the known genetic association of CRYAA (rs7278468, P = 2.8 × 10−16) with nuclear cataract and identified five new loci associated with this disease: SOX2-OT (rs9842371, P = 1.7 × 1

Mendelian randomization analysis does not support causal associations of birth weight with hypertension risk and blood pressure in adulthood

Epidemiology studies suggested that low birthweight was associated with a higher risk of hypertension in later life. However, little is known about the causality of such associations. In our study, we evaluated the causal association of low birthweight with adulthood hypertension following a standard analytic protocol using the study-level data of 183,433 participants from 60 studies (CHARGE-BIG consortium), as well as that with blood pressure using publicly available summary-level genome-wide association data from EGG consortium of 153,781 participants, ICBP consortium and UK Biobank cohort together of 757,601 participants. We used seven SNPs as the instrumental variable in the study-level analysis and 47 SNPs in the summary-level analysis. In the study-level analyses, decreased birthweight was associated with a higher risk of hypertension in adults (the odds ratio per 1 standard deviation (SD) lower birthweight, 1.22; 95% CI 1.16 to 1.28), while no association was found between genetically instrumented birthweight and hypertension risk (instrumental odds ratio for causal effect per 1 SD lower birthweight, 0.97; 95% CI 0.68 to 1.41). Such results were consistent with that from the summary-level analyses, where the genetically determined low birthweight was not associated with blood pressure measurements either. One SD lower genetically determined birthweight was not associated with systolic blood pressure (β = − 0.76, 95% CI − 2.45 to 1.08 mmHg), 0.06 mmHg lower diastolic blood pressure (β = − 0.06, 95% CI − 0.93 to 0.87 mmHg), or pulse pressure (β = − 0.65, 95% CI − 1.38 to 0.69 mmHg, all p > 0.05). Our findings suggest that the inverse association of birthweight with hypertension risk from observational studies was not supported by large Mendelian randomization analyses

A MANET routing protocol using Q-learning method integrated with Bayesian network

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An adaptive delay-based power control and routing scheme

10.1109/ICSPCS.2013.67239262013, 7th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication Systems, ICSPCS 2013 - Proceedings

A Q-Learning-based Power-Controlled Routing protocol in multihop wireless ad hoc network

10.1109/ICON.2013.6781944IEEE International Conference on Networks, ICON

Adaptive control of first-order systems with nonlinear parameterization

Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control21824-1829PCDC

Adaptive control of first-order systems with nonlinear parameterization

10.1109/9.871761IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control4581512-1516IETA

SCAR: A coding-aware routing protocol with self-recommendation in static wireless ad hoc networks

10.1155/2014/637278Journal of Computer Networks and Communications201463727