Epigenetics in Society

Would you take a potentially life-saving drug if you knew that your children and grandchildren might suffer the side effects? Would you change your lifestyle if it meant you could reverse disadvantages built into your genes? Would you be comfortable if corporations could infer intimate details about your life history without asking? What if that data could improve your quality of life? Epigenetics - our epigenome - controls how our genes behave without altering their sequence. Just about everything affects it, from nutrition, drugs, and toxins to child rearing, culture, and society. Many diseases, from obesity to addiction to cancer, can be linked to epigenetic modifications. Furthermore, throughout development and life, from conception to death, the exposures you have will not only affect your own epigenome, but potentially also your child’s, and your grandchild’s. This rapidly expanding field of biological, physiological, sociological, and psychological research could be key to discovering why, and more importantly how, we are the way we are. Epigenetics has consequences for medicine, pregnancy, childcare, law and how we live on an everyday basis. This book will provide a comprehensive introduction to the mechanisms and real-life consequences of epigenetics, and will arm the reader with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions about the future of epigenetics in modern society. This is a call for serious consideration about the effects of epigenetics on society. Epigenetics has been independently peer-reviewed for accuracy by international experts. It is written by students of diverse disciplines, and intended for students and educated lay people.https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/emergingscholarspress/1000/thumbnail.jp

Aboriginal mothers in prison in Australia: a study of social, emotional and physical wellbeing

Objective: To describe the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of Aboriginal mothers in prison. Methods: Cross-sectional survey, including a Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (5-item version) administered to Aboriginal women who self-identified as mothers. Results: Seventy-seven Aboriginal mothers in New South Wales (NSW) and 84 in Western Australia (WA) participated in the study. Eighty-three per cent (n=59) of mothers in NSW were in prison for drug-related offences, 64.8% (n=46) of mothers in WA were in prison for offences committed under the influence of alcohol. Sixty-eight per cent (n=52) of mothers in NSW and 35% (n=28) of mothers in WA reported mental health problems. Physical (PCS) and Mental (MCS) component scores of SF-12 varied for mothers in NSW and WA. Mothers in NSW experienced poorer health and functioning than mothers in WA (NSW: PCS 49.5, MCS 40.6; WA: PCS 54.4, MCS 48.3) and high levels of psychological distress (NSW: 13.1; WA 10.1). Conclusions: Aboriginal mothers in prison have significant health needs associated with physical and mental health, and psychological distress. Implications for public health: Adoption of social and emotional wellbeing as an explanatory framework for culturally secure healthcare in prison is essential to improving health outcomes of Aboriginal mothers in prison in Australia

International genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new primary biliary cirrhosis risk loci and targetable pathogenic pathways.

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a classical autoimmune liver disease for which effective immunomodulatory therapy is lacking. Here we perform meta-analyses of discovery data sets from genome-wide association studies of European subjects (n=2,764 cases and 10,475 controls) followed by validation genotyping in an independent cohort (n=3,716 cases and 4,261 controls). We discover and validate six previously unknown risk loci for PBC (Pcombined<5 × 10(-8)) and used pathway analysis to identify JAK-STAT/IL12/IL27 signalling and cytokine-cytokine pathways, for which relevant therapies exist

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements