An association between seasonal fluctuation ‘cycling’ of 25(OH)D and increased bone resorption but not BMD or BMC in UK South Asian and Caucasian women living at 51on

It has been hypothesised that the U shaped association between 25(OH)D and some health outcomes may be due to large seasonal fluctuations of 25(OH)D1. It is unknown whether such fluctuation of 25(OH)D (‘cycling’) influences bone health. This is an important issue, because if ‘cycling’ is detrimental for bone, then winter only rather than year round vitamin D supplementation may be useful for bone health to ‘blunt’ the rhythm. In the D-FINES study, n = 373 women (South Asian/Caucasian) had repeated measurements in four seasons for serum 25(OH)D and PTH, as well as a DXA scan in autumn and spring. Serum C-telopeptide (sCTX) was also measured in a random subset (n = 66). Cosinor regression analysis was used to identify individuals showing a significant rhythm (p 0.05) between ‘cyclers’ and ‘non-cyclers’ for any of the bone indices in either ethnic group. However, there were trends for a higher CTX and PTH in ‘cyclers’ versus ‘non-cyclers’ in both ethnic groups in every season, but no differences for BMD or BMC (Figs. 1–4). This suggests tentatively that ‘cycling’ could be associated with changes in bone metabolism but may not translate into structural changes. In summary, there is no clear evidence here to suggest that ‘cycling’ is detrimental to bone health, although there are trends in PTH and CTX that warrant further investigation with a larger sample

Sequence diversity analyses of an improved rhesus macaque genome enhance its biomedical utility.

The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) is the most widely studied nonhuman primate (NHP) in biomedical research. We present an updated reference genome assembly (Mmul_10, contig N50 = 46 Mbp) that increases the sequence contiguity 120-fold and annotate it using 6.5 million full-length transcripts, thus improving our understanding of gene content, isoform diversity, and repeat organization. With the improved assembly of segmental duplications, we discovered new lineage-specific genes and expanded gene families that are potentially informative in studies of evolution and disease susceptibility. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data from 853 rhesus macaques identified 85.7 million single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and 10.5 million indel variants, including potentially damaging variants in genes associated with human autism and developmental delay, providing a framework for developing noninvasive NHP models of human disease