Publications

These publications are examples of research made possible with data from CanPath and its regional cohorts.

2018

Gene-by-environment interactions in urban populations modulate risk phenotypes

Authors: Marie-Julie Favé, Fabien C. Lamaze, David Soave, Alan Hodgkinson, Héloïse Gauvin, Vanessa Bruat, Jean-Christophe Grenier, Elias Gbeha, Kimberly Skead, Audrey Smargiassi, Markey Johnson, Youssef Idaghdour & Philip Awadalla

From ∼1000 individuals of a founder population in Quebec, we reveal a substantial impact of the environment on the transcriptome and clinical endophenotypes, overpowering that of genetic ancestry. Air pollution impacts gene expression and pathways affecting cardio-metabolic and respiratory traits, when controlling for genetic ancestry. 

Read Publication
2018

Development of an on-line interactive map to display environmental health assessments of Canadian communities: knowledge-translation to support collaborations for health

Authors: Russell Jude de Souza, Rishi Arora, Lise Gauvin, Natalie Williams, A. P. Oliveira, Dipika Desai, Daniel Corsi, SV Subramanian, A. Rana, Gillian Booth, Fahad Razak, Jeff Brook, Jack Tu, Sonia S. Anand

This report describes an on-line interactive map developed by the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds. It contains information from over 2,000 communities across Canada!

Read Publication
2018

Central and Brachial Blood Pressures, Statins, and Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol

Authors: Florence Lamarche, Mohsen Agharazii, Annie-Claire Nadeau-Fredette, Francois Madore, Remi Goupii

This study wanted to characterize the association of stains and LDL-c with central and brachial blood pressures and to quantify their respective effects. They looked 20004 partcipants, and 16507 of them had available central blood pressure. In conclusion, reduction of LDL-c was associated with only a fraction of the lower blood pressures in statin user and seemed to be mostly associated with improvement of steady (diastolic) pressure, whereas non–LDL-c–mediated pathways were mostly associated with changes in pulsatile pressure components.

Read Publication
2018

Associations Between Depressive Symptoms and Indices of Obesity in Adults With Prediabetes and Normal Blood Glucose Levels: Results From the Emotional Health and Wellbeing Study

Authors: Rachel Burns, Soyna Deschenes, Norbert Schmitz

Depressive symptoms are associated with higher incident rates of dibaetes, but they are not sure if depressive symptoms are linked to prediabetes. The results from this study showed that there was depressive symptoms were positively associated with BMI, fat mass index, waist circumfrence in prediabetic adults. The assoications observed in people with prediabetes were stronger than those observed with normal blood glucose levels.

Read Publication
2018

Uric acid association with pulsatile and steady components of central and peripheral blood pressures

Authors: Fanny Lepeytre, Pierre-Luc Lavoie, Stephan Troyanov, Francois Madore, Mohsen Agharazii, Remi Goupil

The objective of this study was to determine if the cardiovascular risk is attributed to elevated uric acid levels may be explained by changes in central/peripheral pulsatile and or steady blood pressure. After doing a multivariate analysis of over 20000 people, they determined that serum uric acid levels appear to be associated with both central/peripheral steady but not plausible BP, regardless of sex.

Read Publication
2018

A Replication Study for Association of LBX1 Locus With Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis in French–Canadian Population

Authors: Dina Nada, Cedric Julien, Mark Samuels, Alain Moreau

They wanted to see if there was an association between LBX1 polymorphisms and adolescent scoliosis. They looked at 1568 participants and did the appropiate genotyping on them. They concluded that they replicated the association of LBX1 locus with AIS in the french canadian population.

Read Publication
2018

Relaxed Selection During a Recent Human Expansion

Authors: Stephan Peischl, Isabelle Dupanloup, Adrien Foucal, Michele Jomphe, Vanessa Bruat, Jean-Christophe Grenier, Alexandre Gouy, K.J. Gilbert, Elias Gbeha, Lars Bosshard, Eloide Hip-Ki, Mawusse Agbessi, Alan Hodgkinson, Helene Vezina, Philip Awadalla

They assessed genealogies of French Canadians going back to the 17th century (over 4000 ascending geneaologies). With comparison of exomic diversity it revealed: i) both new and low-frequency variants are signficantly more deletrious mutations are at higher frequencies in front individuals, ii)equally deleterious mutations are at higher mutations in front individuals, iii) front individuals are two times more likely to be homozygous for rare very deletrious mutations ins europeans.

Read Publication
2017

Allele-specific expression reveals interactions between genetic variation and environment

Authors: David Knowles, Joe Davis, Hilary Edgington, Anil Raj, Marie-Julie Fave, Xiaowei Zhu, James Potash, Myrna Weissman, Jianxin Shin, Douglas Levinson, Philip Awadalla, Sara Mostafavi, Stephen Montgomery, Alexis Battle

Combining whole-blood RNA-seq with extensive environmental annotations collected from 922 human individuals, we identified 35 GxE interactions, compared with only four using standard GxE interaction testing. EAGLE provides new opportunities for researchers to identify GxE interactions using functional genomic data.

Read Publication
2017

Industrial air emissions, and proximity to major industrial emitters, are associated with anti-citrullinated protein antibodies

Authors: Sasha Bernatsky, Audrey Smargiassi, Lawrence Joseph, Philip Awadalla, Ines Colmega, Marie Hudson, Marvin Fritzler

They assessed the relationships between PM25, SO2, and ACPA which is a marker for RA, they found there was a positive association between ACPA and industrial PM2.5/SO2 emissions. Finally there was a correlation between air pollution from industrial emissions and ACPA suggests a role for these exposures in RA.

Read Publication
2017

The Comparative Reliability and Feasibility of the Past-Year Canadian Diet History Questionnaire II: Comparison of the Paper and Web

Authors: Geraldine Lo Siou, Ilona Cszimadi, Beatrice Boucher, Alianu Akawung, Heather Whelan, Michelle Sharma, Ala Al Rajabi, Jennifer Vena, Sharon Kirkpatrick, Anita Koushik, Isabelle Massarelli, Isabelle Rondreau, Paula Robson

This study looked at evaluating the intra-and inter-version reliability, feasability, and accetability of the Canadian Diet History Questionnaire II in a sub-sample of 648 adults. They were assigned either web or paper, 59% preferred the web version.

Read Publication