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Hang Zhou, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and of biomedical informatics and data science, has been awarded two federal grants to continue his study of the genetics of alcohol use disorder.

Daniel Levey, PhD; Hang Zhou, PhD, Joseph Deak, PhD; and Joel Gelernter, MD, are co-authors of the study, "Alcohol Use and Risk of Dementia in Diverse Populations: Evidence from Cohort, Case–Control and Mendelian Randomisation Approaches" in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The benefits of exercise and its positive influence on physical and mental health are well documented, but a new Yale and VA Connecticut study sheds light on the role genetics plays for physical activity, accounting for some of the differences between individuals and showing differences in biology for physical activity at leisure versus physical activity at work and at home.

A genome-wide analyses in Nature Genetics identified 30 independent loci associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder, highlighting genetic overlap with other psychiatric disorders and implicating putative effector genes and cell types contributing to its etiology. Marco Galimberti, PhD, associate research scientist, is co-first author.

Yale Department of Psychiatry researchers Lu Wang, PhD; Hang Zhou, PhD; and Joel Gelernter, MD, are co-authors of a paper in Biological Psychiatry that extends understanding of the genetic architecture of alcohol use disorder.

Hang Zhou, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry, and Joel Gelernter, MD, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and professor of genetics and of neuroscience, are co-authors of a paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation that reviews progress of human genetic and epigenetic study of alcohol use disorder and summarizes key future directions including applications of whole-genome sequencing, multi-omics and data science approaches.

VA Connecticut Healthcare Center and Yale School of Medicine researchers have completed the first well-powered, genome-wide association study of epiretinal membrane, a common retinal disorder that often causes visual distortion or loss of visual acuity. The first author was Joel Gelernter, MD. Co-author was Daniel Levey, PhD.

Marco Galimberti, PhD, postdoctoral associate, and Joel Gelernter, MD, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Genetics and of Neuroscience, are first and senior authors, respectively, of a paper on Molecular Psychiatry that investigates the genetic architecture and causal relationships between cannabis use disorder and lifetime cannabis use with risk for developing substance use disorders and substance use traits.

A study led by VA Connecticut Healthcare Center/Yale researchers reveals ancestries around the world possess a shared genetic architecture for problematic alcohol use – habitual heavy drinking, accompanied by harmful consequences. Hang Zhou, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and of biomedical informatics & data science at Yale School of Medicine and VA Connecticut, and Joel Gelernter, MD, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, and professor of genetics and of neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine and VA Connecticut, were first and senior authors, respectively.