👤 Jack Antel

Mutations leading to a reduced or loss of function in genes of the leptin-melanocortin system confer a risk for monogenic forms of obesity. Yet, gain of function variants in the melanocortin-4-receptor (MC4R) gene predispose to a lower BMI. In individuals with reduced body weight, we thus expected mutations leading to an enhanced function in the respective genes, like leptin (LEP) and MC4R. Therefore, we have Sanger sequenced the coding regions of LEP and MC4R in 462 female patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), and 445 healthy-lean controls. In total, we have observed four and eight variants in LEP and MC4R, respectively. Previous studies showed different functional in vitro effects for the detected frameshift and non-synonymous variants: (1) LEP: reduced/loss of function (p.Val94Met), (2) MC4R: gain of function (p.Val103Ile, p.Ile251Leu), reduced or loss of function (p.Thr112Met, p.Ser127Leu, p.Leu211fsX) and without functional in vitro data (p.Val50Leut). In LEP, the variant p.Val94Met was detected in one patient with AN. For MC4R variants, one patient with AN carried the frameshift variant p.Leu211fsX. One patient with AN was heterozygous for two variants at the MC4R (p.Val103Ile and p.Ser127Leu). All other functionally relevant variants were detected in similar frequencies in patients with AN and lean individuals. Show less

Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) has been implicated in numerous chronic inflammatory diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS). GM-CSF impacts multiple properties and functions of myeloid cells via species-specific mechanisms. Therefore, we assessed the effect of GM-CSF on different human myeloid cell populations found in MS lesions: monocyte-derived macrophages (MDMs) and microglia. We previously reported a greater number of interleukin (IL)-15 Show less

Deviations from normal body weight are observed prior to and after the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Midlife obesity confers increased AD risk in later life, whereas late-life obesity is associated with decreased AD risk. The role of underweight and weight loss for AD risk is controversial. Based on the hypothesis of shared genetic variants for both obesity and AD, we analyzed the variants identified for AD or obesity from genome-wide association meta-analyses of the GERAD (AD, cases = 6,688, controls = 13,685) and GIANT (body mass index [BMI] as measure of obesity, n = 123,865) consortia. Our cross-disorder analysis of genome-wide significant 39 obesity SNPs and 23 AD SNPs in these two large data sets revealed that: (1) The AD SNP rs10838725 (pAD  = 1.1 × 10(-08)) at the locus CELF1 is also genome-wide significant for obesity (pBMI  = 7.35 × 10(-09) ). (2) Four additional AD risk SNPs were nominally associated with obesity (rs17125944 at FERMT2, pBMI  = 4.03 × 10(-05), pBMI corr  = 2.50 × 10(-03) ; rs3851179 at PICALM; pBMI  = 0.002, rs2075650 at TOMM40/APOE, pBMI  = 0.024, rs3865444 at CD33, pBMI  = 0.024). (3) SNPs at two of the obesity risk loci (rs4836133 downstream of ZNF608; pAD  = 0.002 and at rs713586 downstream of RBJ/DNAJC27; pAD  = 0.018) were nominally associated with AD risk. Additionally, among the SNPs used for confirmation in both studies the AD risk allele of rs1858973, with an AD association just below genome-wide significance (pAD  = 7.20 × 10(-07)), was also associated with obesity (SNP at IQCK/GPRC5B; pBMI  = 5.21 × 10(-06) ; pcorr  = 3.24 × 10(-04)). Our first GWAS based cross-disorder analysis for AD and obesity suggests that rs10838725 at the locus CELF1 might be relevant for both disorders. Show less