Telomere length and bipolar disorder

Variation in telomere length is heritable and is currently considered a promising biomarker of susceptibility for neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly because of its association with memory function and hippocampal morphology. Here, we investigate telomere length in connection to familial risk and disease expression in bipolar disorder (BD). We used quantitative polymerase chain reactions and a telomere-sequence to single-copy-gene-sequence ratio method to determine telomere length in genomic DNA extracted from buccal smears from 63 patients with BD, 74 first-degree relatives (49 relatives had no lifetime psychopathology and 25 had a non-BD mood disorder) and 80 unrelated healthy individuals. Participants also underwent magnetic resonance imaging to determine hippocampal volumes and cognitive assessment to evaluate episodic memory using the verbal paired associates test. Telomere length was shorter in psychiatrically-well relatives (p=0.007) compared to unrelated healthy participants. Telomere length was also shorter in relatives (regardless of psychiatric status; p<0.01) and patients with BD not on lithium (p=0.02) compared to lithium-treated patients with BD. In the entire sample, telomere length was positively associated with left and right hippocampal volume and with delayed recall. This study provides evidence that shortened telomere length is associated with familial risk for BD. Lithium may have neuroprotective properties that require further investigation using prospective designs

IGF2 Gene Variants and Risk of Hypertension in Obese Children and Adolescents

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Drug screening in Scn1a zebrafish mutant identifies clemizole as a potential Dravet syndrome treatment

Dravet syndrome (DS) is a catastrophic pediatric epilepsy with severe intellectual disability, impaired social development and persistent drug-resistant seizures. One of its primary monogenic causes are mutations in Na(v)1.1 (SCN1A), a voltage-gated sodium channel. Here we characterise zebrafish Na(v)1.1 (scn1Lab) mutants originally identified in a chemical mutagenesis screen. Mutants exhibit spontaneous abnormal electrographic activity, hyperactivity and convulsive behaviors. Although scn1Lab expression is reduced, microarray analysis is remarkable for the small fraction of differentially expressed genes (~3%) and lack of compensatory expression changes in other scn subunits. Ketogenic diet, diazepam, valproate, potassium bromide and stiripentol attenuate mutant seizure activity; seven other antiepileptic drugs have no effect. A phenotype-based screen of 320 compounds identifies a US Food and Drug Administration-approved compound (clemizole) that inhibits convulsive behaviors and electrographic seizures. This approach represents a new direction in modeling pediatric epilepsy and could be used to identify novel therapeutics for any monogenic epilepsy disorder