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The authors report a meta-analysis of methylome-wide association studies, identifying 15 significant CpG sites linked to major depression, revealing associations with inflammatory markers and suggesting potential causal relationships through Mendelian randomization analysis.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

Different functional variants in ADH1B (and elsewhere) in Europeans and Africans strongly affect risk for alcohol dependence. Dependence only partly genetically correlates with consumption, with strong correlations to other psychiatric disorders.

A genome-wide association study identifies 17 genetic loci that are associated with the risk of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), and shows that the modulation of haematopoietic stem cell function drives MPN risk.

Early intermittent feeding of mice with a high-cholesterol Western-type diet accelerates atherosclerosis compared with late continuous exposure to the Western-type diet, despite similar cumulative circulating LDL-C levels.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are associated with plasma lipid levels. Here, Tabassum et al. perform genome-wide association studies for lipidomic profiles with 141 (non-standard) lipid species which highlights shared genetic loci with CVD and that traditional lipids have low genetic correlation with other lipids.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Here, the authors present a TWAS framework OTTERS that adapts multiple polygenic risk score methods to estimate eQTL weights from summary-level eQTL data. Both simulation and real studies show OTTERS is powerful across a wide range of genetic architectures.

The influence of X chromosome genetic variation on blood lipids and coronary heart disease (CHD) is not well understood. Here, the authors analyse X chromosome sequencing data across 65,322 multi-ancestry individuals, identifying associations of the Xq23 locus with lipid changes and reduced risk of CHD and diabetes mellitus.

Ruth Loos and colleagues report results of a large genome-wide association study for body mass index. They identify 18 new loci associated with this trait, some of which map near key hypothalamic regulators of energy balance.

John Chambers, Jaspal Kooner, Pim van der Harst, Shyong Tai, Paul Elliott, Jiang He, Norihiro Kato and colleagues performed a genome-wide association study of blood pressure phenotypes in individuals of European, East Asian and South Asian ancestry. They find trait-associated SNPs at 12 loci, some of which are associated with methylation at nearby CpG sites.

Analyses of expression profiles from whole blood of 31,684 individuals identify cis-expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) effects for 88% of genes and trans-eQTL effects for 37% of trait-associated variants.

Cecilia Lindgren and colleagues report results of a large-scale genome-wide association study for waist-to-hip ratio, a measure of body fat distribution. They identify 13 new loci associated with this trait, several of which show stronger effects in women than in men.

Erik Ingelsson and colleagues report a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for associations to the extremes of anthropometric traits, including body mass index, height, waist-to-hip ratio and clinical obesity. They identify four loci newly associated with height and seven loci newly associated with clinical obesity and find overlap in the genetic structure and distribution of variants identified for these extremes of the trait distributions and for the general population.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become a key tool to discover genetic markers for complex traits; however, environmental factors that interact with genes are rarely considered. Here, the authors conduct a GWAS of obesity traits, and find that smoking may alter genetic susceptibilities.

This meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies four genetic loci associated with circulating leptin levels independent of adiposity. Examination in mouse adipose tissue explants provides functional support for the leptin-associated loci.

Environmental influences during prenatal development may have implications for health and disease later in life. Here, Czamara et al. assess DNA methylation in cord blood from new-born under various models including environmental and genetic effects individually and their additive or interaction effects.

A genome-wide association study of 1.7 million individuals identified 41 genetic variants associated with left-handedness and 7 associated with ambidexterity. The genetic correlation between the traits was low, thereby implying different aetiologies.

Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is highly heritable, yet not well understood from a genetic perspective. Here, the authors perform a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in 34,179 POAG cases, identifying 44 previously unreported risk loci and mapping effects across multiple ethnicities.

Fernando Rivadeneira and colleagues in the Genetic Factors for Osteoporosis Consortium report a large-scale meta-analysis identifying new loci associated with bone mineral density (BMD) and risk of fracture. Thirty-two new loci are found to be associated with BMD, and 6 loci confer higher risk for low-trauma bone fracture.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study here shows novel genetic loci to be associated to body fat percentage, and describes cross-phenotype association that further demonstrate a close relationship between adiposity and cardiovascular disease risk.

Samuli Ripatti and colleagues report a genome-wide association study for human serum metabolites using NMR of serum samples from over 8,000 Finnish individuals. They identify 31 loci associated with at least one of 216 serum metabolic measures.

Samuli Ripatti and colleagues report the results of a genome-wide association study for circulating lipid levels based on 1000 Genomes Project imputation. Their results implicate several new loci, refine the association signals at many established loci and highlight the impact of low-frequency variants on lipid traits.

Individual SNPs have small effects on anthropometric traits, yet the impact of CNVs has remained largely unknown. Here, Kutalik and co-workers perform a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis of structural variation and find rare CNVs associated with height, weight and BMI with large effect sizes.

Genetic and environmental factors impact on lung function, important in the diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. Here the authors use imputation of genotypes to the 1000 Genomes Project reference panel to identify novel, low frequency variants associated with lung function.

In a large and prospective cohort, higher polygenic risk is associated with higher risk and earlier age of onset for cardiometabolic disorders and cancer, and has added value to clinical risk scores in clinical disease prediction.

Spectrally resolved photoacoustic images often require the acquisition of data for each wavelength separately. Here, the authors use dual frequency-comb spectroscopy for photoacoustic measurements, enabling spectrally resolved measurements without the need to scan the illumination wavelength.

Rachel Freathy and colleagues report results of a large-scale genome-wide association study of birth weight. They identify four loci newly associated with this trait and find overlap between birth weight–associated loci and those influencing adult height and metabolism.

Struan Grant and colleagues perform a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies to identify loci influencing childhood obesity. They discover variants near OLFM4 and HOXB5 associated with this trait and show that these loci are also associated with increased body mass index in adults.