The recent change in the reporting done by 23andMe from the V4 to V5 chip has thrown things into a bit of a dither. The earlier V4 SNP array was more robust, at least with SNPs of interest to those who work in nutrigenomics. For example, V4 reported over ten […]
Category: 23andMe
Protection against risk of Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease was described in 1817 by Dr James Parkinson, who published an essay reporting six cases of ‘paralysis agitans’ (the disorder that was later renamed after Parkinson). He described the characteristic resting tremor, abnormal posture and gait, paralysis and diminished muscle strength, and the way that the disease progresses over time. [1] Since the […]
Kava-kava for panic attacks
A 2008 paper by Thoeringer et. al., published in the Journal of Neural Transmission [1] described a study of 238 adult Caucasian patients recruited from an Anxiety Disorders Outpatient Clinic in Europe presenting various anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder. As there are many genetic studies linking the GABA system […]
Genetic factors in depression, neuroticism and well-being
Depressive and neurotic behaviours have many potential triggers and contributory factors, but few associated genetic variants have been found, most likely due to the large numbers of subjects needed: Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) require large sample sizes to have sufficient statistical power, which is often achieved by aggregating results in […]
Decoding 23andMe ‘i’ Numbers
23andMe currently reports over 600,000 SNPs in the genome explorer, which are analyzed by their custom 2014 v4 chip. The process used is genotyping, rather than sequencing. The former is cheaper and quicker, and targets specific parts of the genome that are known to have variants in some or many people; the latter […]