Serious mental illnesses have long been sorted into separate diagnostic boxes, yet they cluster stubbornly within the same families. Researchers examined 173 multiplex families from the Portuguese Island Collection, drawn from the genetically isolated Azores and Madeira. In 28 percent of those families, psychosis and mood disorders co-segregated; in 7 percent, autism and intellectual disability joined the same pedigree. Whole-genome sequencing of one three-generation family uncovered an ultra-rare loss-of-function mutation in CHD2 that appeared as schizophrenia in most carriers and as autism in another. The work argues that founder-population families can expose rare, large-effect variants spanning the diagnostic spectrum.

New grants to UC San Diego researchers will help them explain why women are more likely to get Alzheimer's disease and develop new risk-prediction tools for clinicians.

The International Society of Microbiota (ISM) is pleased to announce the appointment of Pofessor Dr. Soheil Saeedi, University Hospital Zurich and University of Zurich, Switzerland, as Vice-President of ISM.