The role of heme oxygenase-1 in hematopoietic system and its microenvironment

Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences - Hematopoietic system transports all necessary nutrients to the whole organism and provides the immunological protection. Blood cells have high turnover,...     

A whole-genome admixture scan finds a candidate locus for multiple sclerosis susceptibility

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease with proven heritability, but, despite large-scale attempts, no underlying risk genes have been identified. Traditional linkage scans have so far identified only one risk haplotype for multiple sclerosis (at HLA on chromosome 6), which explains only a fraction of the increased risk to siblings. Association scans such as admixture mapping have much more power, in principle, to find the weak factors that must explain most of the disease risk. We describe here the first high-powered admixture scan, focusing on 605 African American cases and 1,043 African American controls, and report a locus on chromosome 1 that is significantly associated with multiple sclerosis.     

Early microbiota,antibiotics and health

The colonization of the neonatal digestive tract provides a microbial stimulus required for an adequate maturation towards the physiological homeostasis of the host. This colonization, which is affected by several factors, begins with facultative anaerobes and continues with anaerobic genera. Accumulating evidence underlines the key role of the early neonatal period for this microbiota-induced maturation, being a key determinant factor for later health. Therefore, understanding the factors that determine the establishment of the microbiota in the infant is of critical importance. Exposure to antibiotics, either prenatally or postnatally, is common in early life mainly due to the use of intrapartum prophylaxis or to the administration of antibiotics in C-section deliveries. However, we are still far from understanding the impact of early antibiotics and their long-term effects. Increased risk of non-communicable diseases, such as allergies or obesity, has been observed in individuals exposed to antibiotics during early infancy. Moreover, the impact of antibiotics on the establishment of the infant gut resistome, and on the role of the microbiota as a reservoir of resistance genes, should be evaluated in the context of the problems associated with the increasing number of antibiotic resistant pathogenic strains. In this article, we review and discuss the above-mentioned issues with the aim of encouraging debate on the actions needed for understanding the impact of early life antibiotics upon human microbiota and health and for developing strategies aimed at minimizing this impact.     

Multiple regions within 8q24 independently affect risk for prostate cancer

After the recent discovery that common genetic variation in 8q24 influences inherited risk of prostate cancer, we genotyped 2,973 SNPs in up to 7,518 men with and without prostate cancer from five populations. We identified seven risk variants, five of them previously undescribed, spanning 430 kb and each independently predicting risk for prostate cancer (P = 7.9 x 10(-19) for the strongest association, and P < 1.5 x 10(-4) for five of the variants, after controlling for each of the others). The variants define common genotypes that span a more than fivefold range of susceptibility to cancer in some populations. None of the prostate cancer risk variants aligns to a known gene or alters the coding sequence of an encoded protein.