Statin Initiation and Dementia Incidence in a Large Health Care System From 1997 to 2020: A Target Trial Emulation Study.

Background And Objectives: Previous research of associations between statins and Alzheimer disease and Alzheimer disease-related dementias (AD/ADRDs) has been limited by short follow-up, small samples, and confounding. We aimed to estimate the association between the 1st statin prescription and incident AD/ADRD among members of a large population-based cohort of older adults.

Methods: We used a cohort study design emulating a target trial using data from Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC), an integrated health care delivery system.

Sociodemographic modifiers of effects of statin initiation on dementia incidence: An emulated trial design in a large health care member population with 10+ years of follow-up.

Introduction: Mixed evidence on how statin use affects risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) may reflect heterogeneity across sociodemographic factors. Few studies have sufficient power to evaluate effect modifiers.

Methods: Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) members (n = 705,061; n = 202,937 with sociodemographic surveys) who initiated statins from 2001 to 2010 were matched on age and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) with non-initiators and followed through 2020 for incident ADRD.

Validation of Hindi version of the obstetric quality of recovery score-11 (ObsQoR-11 H) following elective caesarean section.

Background And Aims: Obstetric quality of recovery score-11 (ObsQoR-11) was developed in English to evaluate the quality of recovery in the caesarean section. We aimed to validate the Hindi version of ObsQoR-11 (ObsQoR-11H) for Hindi-speaking patients to evaluate the quality of recovery following the elective caesarean section.

Methods: The ObsQoR-11 was translated into Hindi and assessed for validity, acceptability and feasibility.

Metformin Cessation and Dementia Incidence.

Importance: Prior studies suggested that metformin may be associated with reduced dementia incidence, but associations may be confounded by disease severity and prescribing trends. Cessation of metformin therapy in people with diabetes typically occurs due to signs of kidney dysfunction but sometimes is due to less serious adverse effects associated with metformin.

Objective: To investigate the association of terminating metformin treatment for reasons unrelated to kidney dysfunction with dementia incidence.

Adverse childhood experiences in early life increase the odds of depression among adults with multiple sclerosis.

Background: Adverse childhood experiences are demonstrated risk factors for depression, a common co-morbidity of multiple sclerosis, but are understudied among people with multiple sclerosis.

Objective: Estimate the association between adverse childhood experiences and depression among 1,990 adults with multiple sclerosis.

Methods: Participants were members of Kaiser Permanente Northern California from two studies between 2006 and 2021 and were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis by a neurologist.

Cross-Trait Mendelian Randomization Study to Investigate Whether Migraine Is a Risk Factor for Multiple Sclerosis.

Background And Objectives: Migraine is common among people with multiple sclerosis (MS), but the reasons for this are unknown. We tested 3 hypothesized mechanisms for this observed comorbidity, including migraine is a risk factor of MS, genetic variants are shared between the conditions, and migraine is because of MS.

Methods: Data were from 2 sources: publicly available summary statistics from genome-wide association studies of MS (N = 115,748) and migraine (N = 375,752 and N = 361,141) and a case-control study of MS recruited from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Health Plan (N = 1,991).

Validation of electronic medical record-based phenotyping algorithms: results and lessons learned from the eMERGE network.

Background: Genetic studies require precise phenotype definitions, but electronic medical record (EMR) phenotype data are recorded inconsistently and in a variety of formats.

Objective: To present lessons learned about validation of EMR-based phenotypes from the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) studies.

Materials And Methods: The eMERGE network created and validated 13 EMR-derived phenotype algorithms.

nuScore: a web-interface for nucleosome positioning predictions.

Unlabelled: Sequence-directed mapping of nucleosome positions is of major biological interest. Here, we present a web-interface for estimation of the affinity of the histone core to DNA and prediction of nucleosome arrangement on a given sequence. Our approach is based on assessment of the energy cost of imposing the deformations required to wrap DNA around the histone surface.

CGHweb: a tool for comparing DNA copy number segmentations from multiple algorithms.

Unlabelled: Accurate estimation of DNA copy numbers from array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) data is important for characterizing the cancer genome. An important part of this process is the segmentation of the log-ratios between the sample and control DNA along the chromosome into regions of different copy numbers. However, multiple algorithms are available in the literature for this procedure and the results can vary substantially among these.

Promoter profiling and coexpression data analysis identifies 24 novel genes that are coregulated with AMPA receptor genes, GRIAs.

We identified a set of transcriptional elements that are conserved and overrepresented within the promoters of human, mouse, and rat GRIAs by comparing these promoters against a collection of 10,741 gene promoters. Cells regulate functional groups of genes by coordinating the transcriptional and/or posttranscriptional mRNA levels of interacting genes. As such, it is expected that functional groups of genes share the same transcriptional features within their promoters.

Dragon TF Association Miner: a system for exploring transcription factor associations through text-mining.

We present Dragon TF Association Miner (DTFAM), a system for text-mining of PubMed documents for potential functional association of transcription factors (TFs) with terms from Gene Ontology (GO) and with diseases. DTFAM has been trained and tested in the selection of relevant documents on a manually curated dataset containing >3000 PubMed abstracts relevant to transcription control. On our test data the system achieves sensitivity of 80% with specificity of 82%.

Content analysis of the core promoter region of human genes.

We analyzed an extended core promoter regions covering [-70,+60] segment relative to the transcription start site of human promoters contained in the Eukaryotic Promoter Database. The analysis was made by using the Match program ver. 1.