rs885834

This paper presents parallel Independent Component Analysis (ICA), a novel multivariate method for jointly analyzing functional MRI and SNP data to identify connections between brain function and genetic variation. Applied to 63 participants (20 schizophrenia patients, 43 controls), the method extracted linked components from 367 SNPs and fMRI data, identifying a genetic component containing SNPs in genes such as DISC1 (rs821616), ADRA2A (rs2429511), and CHRNA7 (rs3087454) that correlated with fMRI-derived brain networks involved in the auditory oddball task.

This Bayesian pharmacogenetic analysis of a bupropion vs placebo smoking cessation trial (n=436 European ancestry participants) identified four SNPs with pharmacogenetic relevance from 59 candidate SNPs in nicotinic acetylcholine receptor genes. The strongest signal was rs871058 in CHRNA5, which showed treatment-by-SNP interaction effects on 7-day smoking cessation rates. Bayesian hypothesis testing proved more conservative than unadjusted frequentist tests but less so than multiplicity-corrected tests, with no control SNPs showing significant associations.

This association study screened 93 SNPs in 19 cholinergic genes (CHAT, CHRM1-5, CHRNA1-7, CHRNA9-10, CHRNB1-4) in two bipolar disorder (BD) pedigree series: NIMH Genetics Initiative (474 samples, 152 families) and Clinical Neurogenetics (83 samples, 22 families). Sib-TDT analysis showed nominally significant association for four SNPs (CHRNA2 rs7017417 P=0.024, CHRNA5 rs514743 P=0.031, CHRNB1 rs2302762 P=0.049, CHRNB4 rs1948 P=0.031), but none reached gene-wide significance after multiple testing correction. The authors conclude that these 19 cholinergic genes are unlikely to play a major role in BD predisposition in these pedigrees.