Frontiers | Science News

Science News post list

24 news posts in Frontiers in Genetics

Frontiers news

10 Oct 2016

Join us in Vancouver, Canada for the American Society of Human Genetics 2016 conference (ASHG 2016)

  Between the dates of 18th – 21st October 2016, Frontiers in Genetics will be in gorgeous Vancouver for #ASHG16. If you are an attendee at the conference, then we invite you to our exhibitor booth #1106 to discuss our community journals; our collaborative, rigorous and fair peer-review system; and how publishing with Frontiers will unlock your research’s true impact. If you are in Vancouver and wish to chat, but will not be at ASHG, then we would still love to meet! We have several guest passes available. Please immediately get in touch with our team, to express your interest and arrange a meeting: Email: genetics@frontiersin.org Twitter: @FrontGenetics Whether in Switzerland or Vancouver, Frontiers looks forward to meeting you!  

Health

07 Oct 2016

Mental illness genetically linked to drug use and misuse

By Tania Fitzgeorge-Balfour, Frontiers Science Writer A person’s genetic risk for psychiatric disorders is related to his or her vulnerability to substance use and misuse There are many reports of drug use leading to mental health problems, and we all know of someone having a few too many drinks to cope with a bad day. Many people who are diagnosed with a mental health disorder indulge in drugs, and vice versa. As severity of both increase, problems arise and they become more difficult to treat. But why substance involvement and psychiatric disorders often co-occur is not well understood. In addition to environmental factors, such as stress and social relationships, a person’s genetic make-up can also contribute to their vulnerability to drug use and misuse as well as mental health problems. So could genetic risk for mental illness be linked to a person’s liability to use drugs? This question has been addressed in a new study, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Genetics. “Our research shows that if someone is genetically predisposed towards having mental illness, they are also prone to use licit and illicit substances and develop problematic usage patterns,” says Caitlin E. Carey, a PhD student in the […]

Health

24 Jun 2016

Should we treat aging as a disease?

Academic, pharmaceutical, healthcare policy and pension fund perspectives. — By Elliott Williams “The fundamental questions of whether aging can and should be classified as a disease are not new, but today they are more pressing than ever for many reasons,” says Dr Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine and Chief Science Officer at the Biogerontology Research Foundation. Gerontology, the study of old age, spans multiple academic fields from economics to social sciences. Biogerontology specifically focuses on those biological process that contribute to aging, as well as the ultimate effects of aging on our health. Insights from biogerontology studies will contribute to public and private medical research, influencing our societal values, and guide policy makers in their decisions. “The main problems in biogerontology are similar to those in drug discovery for most human diseases — but with fewer resources, less visibility and less of a sense of urgency,” says Dr Alex Zhavoronkov. To bring into focus aging as a disease, Dr Zhavoronkov is looking to the future, and the 2018 release of the WHO-curated ICD-11. The ICD (International Classification of Diseases) is an extensive piece of work used at all levels of healthcare management: from physicians to patient organizations, from insurers to policy […]

Life sciences

05 Jun 2016

West African genes lower the risk of obesity in men, suggests study

By Michiel Dijkstra, science writer The obesity epidemic affects women and men of every ethnic group in the United States, but strong gender and racial disparities in the risk of overweight and obesity exist. African American women are currently more at risk than any other group in the United States: 82.1% of African American women are overweight or obese (defined as having a BMI of 25 or higher), compared to 76.2% of Hispanic women and 64.6% of Caucasian women, according to the 2011-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Socioeconomic factors, such as inequalities in access to healthcare, healthy food, and safe places to exercise, are known to be important causes of these and other racial disparities in health characteristics. In contrast, “only” 69.1% of African American men are overweight or obese – a percentage that is still alarmingly high in absolute terms, but lower than the percentages for Caucasian men (73.2%), and Hispanic men (77.9%), according to the NHANES data. A similar pattern has been reported for type-2 diabetes, a disease strongly associated with overweight and obesity: according to a 2007 study in The American Journal of Public Health, the incidence of diabetes is higher among African American […]

Life sciences

13 May 2016

Using precision-genetics in pigs to beat cancer

Because of their similarities to people, using new technology in pigs turns up as a valuable alternative to rodent models of cancer. By Mônica Favre, Frontiers Staff Science Writer The numbers are staggering: more than 40 % is the lifetime risk of developing cancer in the U.S., with only 66 % survival-rates 5 years after diagnosis, for all types of cancer. Trends suggest that in 2015, over 1.6 million new cases were diagnosed in the U.S., with over 580,000 deaths in consequence. These numbers emphasize the need to better understand and treat the various forms of the disease, but mouse models usually used in cancer research have given us limited answers.  However, Senior Scientist Adrienne Watson and colleagues at Recombinetics and the University of Minnesota, say that pigs may turn out to be the best alternative models. “Many organ systems vary so greatly between rodents and humans that certain types of cancer cannot be accurately modelled,” says Watson, despite the major role mouse models have played in our understanding of the disease. The authors conclude that the five deadliest cancers in the U.S. cannot be modeled in rodents, or have ineffective models for identification of treatments that translate to the […]