Ulcerative colitis-risk loci on chromosomes 1p36 and 12q15 found by genome-wide association study.

Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the colon that presents as diarrhea and gastrointestinal bleeding. We performed a genome-wide association study using DNA samples from 1,052 individuals with ulcerative colitis and preexisting data from 2,571 controls, all of European ancestry. In an analysis that controlled for gender and population structure, ulcerative colitis loci attaining genome-wide significance and subsequent replication in two independent populations were identified on chromosomes 1p36 (rs6426833, combined P = 5.1 x 10(-13), combined odds ratio OR = 0.73) and 12q15 (rs1558744, combined P = 2.5 x 10(-12), combined OR = 1.35). In addition, combined genome-wide significant evidence for association was found in a region spanning BTNL2 to HLA-DQB1 on chromosome 6p21 (rs2395185, combined P = 1.0 x 10(-16), combined OR = 0.66) and at the IL23R locus on chromosome 1p31 (rs11209026, combined P = 1.3 x 10(-8), combined OR = 0.56; rs10889677, combined P = 1.3 x 10(-8), combined OR = 1.29)

Helicobacter pylori Antibiotic Resistance: Trends Over Time

Resistance to antibiotics can be a major problem in the treatment of bacterial infections. As the use of antibiotics increases, bacterial resistance to these agents is rising and in many cases is responsible for the failure of treatment regimens. Although the treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection requires the use of more than one antibiotic to obtain adequate eradication rates, the efficacy of the currently used antibiotic combinations has been shown to be decreased by resistance to one of the antibiotics. The use of antibiotics in regimens for the treatment of H pylori is increasing in many countries, including Canada. This increase is both in the use of these antibiotics alone for the treatment of nongastrointestinal infections and in their use in association with proton pump inhibitors for the treatment of H pylori infection. In several European and Asian countries, where resistance to antibiotics is being monitored, it has been demonstrated that H pylori resistance to metronidazole and to clarithromycin increased throughout the 1990s. Thus far, the data available in Canada do not show increased resistance to either of these antibiotics. As for other antibiotics used in the treatment of H pylori infection, such as tetracycline and amoxicillin, the rate of resistance to these agents is still very low and does not constitute a significant problem. Because the efficacy of the regimens used in the treatment of H pylori infection is compromised by resistance to the antibiotics used, it is important that H pylori resistance rates in Canada and throughout the world continue to be monitored. Only with such reliable data can the most optimal regimens be recommended

Meeting Review – Helicobacter pylori: Basic Mechanisms to Clinical Cure 2000

The meeting Helicobacter pylori: Basic Mechanisms to Clinical Cure 2000, held in Bermuda from March 26 to 29, 2000, gathered physicians and scientists from all corners of the world. State-of-the-art reviews and the most recent developments in the field were presented. This article summarizes the highlights of this meeting, including important scientific and clinical developments

Tropical Sprue in a Case of Heterosexually Transmitted Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

A heterosexual patient presented with severe diarrhea, malabsorption and weight loss. He was found to have acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) on the basis of candida esophagitis. Pneumocysris carinii pneumonia, inversion of T lymphocyte subpopulation ratio and the presence of serum anti-HIV virus antibodies. The patient had travelled to Haiti and the Dominican Republic where he had multiple sexual contacts with indigenous women. Despite thorough evaluation to identify the cause of diarrhea no infection, agent was discovered. Duodenal biopsy showed partial villous atrophy, slight crypt hyperplasia and increased number of intraepithelial lymphocytes. After two weeks treatment with tetracycline and folic acid. the patient was symptom free and intestinal histology had returned ro normal. Tropical sprue must thus be considered in the differential diagnosis of intestinal villous atrophy in patients with AIDS

Ulcerative colitis-risk loci on chromosomes 1p36 and 12q15 found by genome-wide association study.

Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the colon that presents as diarrhea and gastrointestinal bleeding. We performed a genome-wide association study using DNA samples from 1,052 individuals with ulcerative colitis and preexisting data from 2,571 controls, all of European ancestry. In an analysis that controlled for gender and population structure, ulcerative colitis loci attaining genome-wide significance and subsequent replication in two independent populations were identified on chromosomes 1p36 (rs6426833, combined P = 5.1 x 10(-13), combined odds ratio OR = 0.73) and 12q15 (rs1558744, combined P = 2.5 x 10(-12), combined OR = 1.35). In addition, combined genome-wide significant evidence for association was found in a region spanning BTNL2 to HLA-DQB1 on chromosome 6p21 (rs2395185, combined P = 1.0 x 10(-16), combined OR = 0.66) and at the IL23R locus on chromosome 1p31 (rs11209026, combined P = 1.3 x 10(-8), combined OR = 0.56; rs10889677, combined P = 1.3 x 10(-8), combined OR = 1.29)

Comparative performances of machine learning methods for classifying Crohn Disease patients using genome-wide genotyping data

Abstract: Crohn Disease (CD) is a complex genetic disorder for which more than 140 genes have been identified using genome wide association studies (GWAS). However, the genetic architecture of the trait remains largely unknown. The recent development of machine learning (ML) approaches incited us to apply them to classify healthy and diseased people according to their genomic information. The Immunochip dataset containing 18,227 CD patients and 34,050 healthy controls enrolled and genotyped by the international Inflammatory Bowel Disease genetic consortium (IIBDGC) has been re-analyzed using a set of ML methods: penalized logistic regression (LR), gradient boosted trees (GBT) and artificial neural networks (NN). The main score used to compare the methods was the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) statistics. The impact of quality control (QC), imputing and coding methods on LR results showed that QC methods and imputation of missing genotypes may artificially increase the scores. At the opposite, neither the patient/control ratio nor marker preselection or coding strategies significantly affected the results. LR methods, including Lasso, Ridge and ElasticNet provided similar results with a maximum AUC of 0.80. GBT methods like XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost, together with dense NN with one or more hidden layers, provided similar AUC values, suggesting limited epistatic effects in the genetic architecture of the trait. ML methods detected near all the genetic variants previously identified by GWAS among the best predictors plus additional predictors with lower effects. The robustness and complementarity of the different methods are also studied. Compared to LR, non-linear models such as GBT or NN may provide robust complementary approaches to identify and classify genetic markers