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Neurology and Psychiatry Epigenetics

Section information

Section Editors: Jonathan Mill and Moshe Szyf
Associate Editor: Riccardo Marioni, Jonathan Turner

Neurological and psychiatric disease makes a huge contribution to the global burden of disease, but little is known about their underlying etiology. This section welcomes articles exploring the role of epigenetic processes across the spectrum of brain disorders. We are particularly interested in articles exploring the interplay between genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors, and the utility of molecular biomarkers for diagnostic and prognostic phenotyping. We would also welcome mechanistic studies exploring the functional pathways involved in mediating the effects of epigenetic variation in the central nervous system using disease-relevant tissue and model systems.

  1. Prenatal symptoms of depression (PND) and anxiety affect up to every third pregnancy. Children of mothers with mental health problems are at higher risk of developmental problems, possibly through epigenetic m...

    Authors: Theodora Kunovac Kallak, Emma Bränn, Emma Fransson, Åsa Johansson, Susanne Lager, Erika Comasco, Robert Lyle and Alkistis Skalkidou
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2021 13:78
  2. An intronic GGGGCC (G4C2) hexanucleotide repeat expansion (HRE) in the C9ORF72 gene is the most common cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), referred to as C9ALS/FTD. No ...

    Authors: Esteban Quezada, Claudio Cappelli, Iván Diaz, Nur Jury, Nicholas Wightman, Robert H. Brown Jr., Martín Montecino and Brigitte van Zundert
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2021 13:56
  3. Late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex multifactorial affliction, the pathogenesis of which is thought to involve gene-environment interactions that might be captured in the epigenome. The present st...

    Authors: Roy Lardenoije, Janou A. Y. Roubroeks, Ehsan Pishva, Markus Leber, Holger Wagner, Artemis Iatrou, Adam R. Smith, Rebecca G. Smith, Lars M. T. Eijssen, Luca Kleineidam, Amit Kawalia, Per Hoffmann, Tobias Luck, Steffi Riedel-Heller, Frank Jessen, Wolfgang Maier…
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2019 11:164
  4. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is hypothesized to involve epigenetic dysfunction. Previous studies of DNA modifications in Alzheimer’s disease have been unable to distingu...

    Authors: Adam R. Smith, Rebecca G. Smith, Ehsan Pishva, Eilis Hannon, Janou A. Y. Roubroeks, Joe Burrage, Claire Troakes, Safa Al-Sarraj, Carolyn Sloan, Jonathan Mill, Daniel L. van den Hove and Katie Lunnon
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2019 11:52
  5. The effects of tobacco smoking on epigenome-wide methylation signatures in white blood cells (WBCs) collected from persons living with HIV may have important implications for their immune-related outcomes, inc...

    Authors: Xinyu Zhang, Ying Hu, Bradley E. Aouizerat, Gang Peng, Vincent C. Marconi, Michael J. Corley, Todd Hulgan, Kendall J. Bryant, Hongyu Zhao, John H. Krystal, Amy C. Justice and Ke Xu
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:155
  6. We have previously evaluated the efficacy of the CRF1 receptor antagonist GSK561679 in female PTSD patients. While GSK561679 was not superior to placebo overall, it was associated with a significantly stronger sy...

    Authors: Julius C. Pape, Tania Carrillo-Roa, Barbara O. Rothbaum, Charles B. Nemeroff, Darina Czamara, Anthony S. Zannas, Dan Iosifescu, Sanjay J. Mathew, Thomas C. Neylan, Helen S. Mayberg, Boadie W. Dunlop and Elisabeth B. Binder
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:136
  7. Methylation of DNA is associated with a variety of biological processes. With whole-genome studies of DNA methylation, it became possible to determine a set of genomic sites where DNA methylation is associated...

    Authors: Nikolay Kondratyev, Arkady Golov, Margarita Alfimova, Tatiana Lezheiko and Vera Golimbet
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:130

    The Correction to this article has been published in Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:151

  8. Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide, and the majority of the cases are ischemic stroke. However, it still lacks effective treatment except for thrombolytic therapy in an extre...

    Authors: Qingsheng Kong, Yongnan Hao, Xin Li, Xin Wang, Bingyuan Ji and Yili Wu
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:117
  9. Whole-exome sequencing has revealed a rare missense variant in PLD3 gene (rs145999145) to be associated with late onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Nevertheless, the association remains controversial and little is ...

    Authors: Idoia Blanco-Luquin, Miren Altuna, Javier Sánchez-Ruiz de Gordoa, Amaya Urdánoz-Casado, Miren Roldán, María Cámara, Victoria Zelaya, María Elena Erro, Carmen Echavarri and Maite Mendioroz
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:116
  10. The importance of epigenetic alterations in psychiatric disorders is increasingly acknowledged and the use of DNA methylation patterns as markers of disease is a topic of ongoing investigation. Recent studies ...

    Authors: Mara Thomas, Nora Knoblich, Annalena Wallisch, Katarzyna Glowacz, Julia Becker-Sadzio, Friederike Gundel, Christof Brückmann and Vanessa Nieratschker
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:109
  11. Genetic predisposition and epigenetic alterations are both considered to contribute to sporadic neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Since cell reprogramming and the generation o...

    Authors: Laura de Boni, Gilles Gasparoni, Carolin Haubenreich, Sascha Tierling, Ina Schmitt, Michael Peitz, Philipp Koch, Jörn Walter, Ullrich Wüllner and Oliver Brüstle
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2018 10:13
  12. Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is a significant public health problem and can result in a continuum of adverse outcomes to the fetus known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Subjects with FASD s...

    Authors: Nadia Rachdaoui, Ling Li, Belinda Willard, Takhar Kasumov, Stephen Previs and Dipak Sarkar
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2017 9:117
  13. There is increasing evidence for the role of prenatal stress in shaping offspring DNA methylation and disease susceptibility. In the current study, we aimed to identify genes and pathways associated with pregn...

    Authors: Elise Beau Vangeel, Ehsan Pishva, Titia Hompes, Daniel van den Hove, Diether Lambrechts, Karel Allegaert, Kathleen Freson, Benedetta Izzi and Stephan Claes
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2017 9:107
  14. Ageing is the main risk factor for human neurological disorders. Among the diverse molecular pathways that govern ageing, epigenetics can guide age-associated decline in part by regulating gene expression and ...

    Authors: Raúl Delgado-Morales, Roberto Carlos Agís-Balboa, Manel Esteller and María Berdasco
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2017 9:67
  15. DNA methylation is an important epigenetic mechanism involved in gene regulation, with alterations in DNA methylation in the nuclear genome being linked to numerous complex diseases. Mitochondrial DNA methylat...

    Authors: Matthew Devall, Rebecca G. Smith, Aaron Jeffries, Eilis Hannon, Matthew N. Davies, Leonard Schalkwyk, Jonathan Mill, Michael Weedon and Katie Lunnon
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2017 9:47
  16. Cerebral white matter hyperintensities (WMH) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are part of the spectrum of brain vascular injury accompanying aging and are associated with a substantial risk of stroke and de...

    Authors: Abhay Raina, Xiaoping Zhao, Megan L. Grove, Jan Bressler, Rebecca F. Gottesman, Weihua Guan, James S. Pankow, Eric Boerwinkle, Thomas H. Mosley and Myriam Fornage
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2017 9:21
  17. Panic disorder (PD) is considered to be a multifactorial disorder emerging from interactions among multiple genetic and environmental factors. To date, although genetic studies reported several susceptibility ...

    Authors: Mihoko Shimada-Sugimoto, Takeshi Otowa, Taku Miyagawa, Tadashi Umekage, Yoshiya Kawamura, Miki Bundo, Kazuya Iwamoto, Mamoru Tochigi, Kiyoto Kasai, Hisanobu Kaiya, Hisashi Tanii, Yuji Okazaki, Katsushi Tokunaga and Tsukasa Sasaki
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2017 9:6
  18. Epigenetic mechanisms are important for the regulation of gene expression and differentiation in the fetus and the newborn child. Symptoms of maternal depression and antidepressant use affects up to 20 % of pr...

    Authors: Anne-Cathrine F. Viuff, Lars Henning Pedersen, Kasper Kyng, Nicklas Heine Staunstrup, Anders Børglum and Tine Brink Henriksen
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2016 8:94
  19. Immunoactivation is less evident in secondary progressive MS (SPMS) compared to relapsing-remitting disease. MicroRNA (miRNA) expression is integral to the regulation of gene expression; determining their impa...

    Authors: Katherine A. Sanders, Miles C. Benton, Rod A. Lea, Vicki E. Maltby, Susan Agland, Nathan Griffin, Rodney J. Scott, Lotti Tajouri and Jeannette Lechner-Scott
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2016 8:87
  20. Bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia (SZ) are known to share common genetic and psychosocial risk factors. A recent epigenome-wide association study performed on blood samples from SZ patients found signifi...

    Authors: Anna Starnawska, Ditte Demontis, Andrew McQuillin, Niamh L. O’Brien, Nicklas H. Staunstrup, Ole Mors, Anders L. Nielsen, Anders D. Børglum and Mette Nyegaard
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2016 8:52
  21. Recent genome-wide association studies revealed TREM2 rs75932628-T variant to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative diseases. However, the role that TREM2 plays in sporadic AD is...

    Authors: Naiara Celarain, Javier Sánchez-Ruiz de Gordoa, María Victoria Zelaya, Miren Roldán, Rosa Larumbe, Laura Pulido, Carmen Echavarri and Maite Mendioroz
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2016 8:37
  22. Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common form of inherited intellectual disability, resulting from the loss of function of the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene. The molecular pathways associated with...

    Authors: Sarah Brasa, Arne Mueller, Sébastien Jacquemont, Florian Hahne, Izabela Rozenberg, Thomas Peters, Yunsheng He, Christine McCormack, Fabrizio Gasparini, Salah-Dine Chibout, Olivier Grenet, Jonathan Moggs, Baltazar Gomez-Mancilla and Rémi Terranova
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2016 8:15
  23. Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe, familial psychiatric condition. Progress in understanding the aetiology of BD has been hampered by substantial phenotypic and genetic heterogeneity. We sought to mitigate the...

    Authors: Rosie May Walker, Andrea Nikie Christoforou, Daniel L. McCartney, Stewart W. Morris, Nicholas A. Kennedy, Peter Morten, Susan Maguire Anderson, Helen Scott Torrance, Alix Macdonald, Jessika Elizabeth Sussmann, Heather Clare Whalley, Douglas H. R. Blackwood, Andrew Mark McIntosh, David John Porteous and Kathryn Louise Evans
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2016 8:5
  24. Stressor exposure during early life has the potential to increase an individual’s susceptibility to a number of neuropsychiatric conditions such as mood and anxiety disorders and schizophrenia in adulthood. Th...

    Authors: Magdalene C. Jawahar, Chris Murgatroyd, Emma L. Harrison and Bernhard T. Baune
    Citation: Clinical Epigenetics 2015 7:122