Preprint Initial findings from the DecodeME genome-wide association study of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, 2025, DecodeMe Collaboration

[bobbler]

Genetic links to "intelligence" always struck me as a hollow concept anyways. Really, it's a genetic association for doing slightly better on a handful of tests where you match patterns or pick words out of a list. The links between those types of tests and anything else people would associate with "intelligence"--good decision making, creative problem solving, professional success, interest in research, etc.--have always come across as incredibly dubious to me. Not in the least because social factors so heavily skew both performance on those tests and any of those other indicators of "intelligence". Is a gene actually associated with the nebulous concept of "intelligence", or with the closed-off social strata that have better access to schooling and more time on their hands to participate in research, or perhaps with the lack of various health conditions that would make someone less focused during a long battery of cognitive tests?

There may well be some confounding and self-selection with that particular finding, but more likely explained by those other factors rather than any concept of "intelligence."

Not to mention the cultural bias in the questions themselves having blown a lot of the old tests as not measuring what they thought they were (and then it’s so obvious you can’t unsee it after it’s pointed out) in the last decade.

 

[Snow Leopard]

There's also this blog by Paolo Maccalini on the DecodeME results, focusing on the FUMA SNP2GENE analysis, which forestglip explored earlier in this thread.

Tissue and cell-type analysis of DecodeME GWAS data

AbstractI applied the FUMA SNP2GENE module to genome-wide association summary statistics from the main cohort of the DecodeME study, comprising approximately 16,000 individuals with myalgic encepha…

paolomaccallini.wordpress.com

The 18 genes singled out are mostly associated with the nervous system (both CNS and associated with peripheral nerve disease, injury or recovery), the immune system and mitochondria.

eg starting with the first one, ABT1 is a mitochondrial associated gene but is associated with the IGHMBP2 related genetic motor neuron diseases.

 

[forestglip]

Some posts about chronic traumatic encephalopathy have been moved to:

Traumatic brain injury - similarities with and differences to ME/CFS, including PEM

 

[DMissa]

The 18 genes singled out are mostly associated with the nervous system (both CNS and associated with peripheral nerve disease, injury or recovery), the immune system and mitochondria.

eg starting with the first one, ABT1 is a mitochondrial gene but is associated with the IGHMBP2 related genetic motor neuron diseases.

I have nowhere close to enough time to look yet... is this mitochondrially encoded genes or mitochondrially localised gene products? Or just with some association with mitochondrially relevant pathways?

 

[ME/CFS Science Blog]

On our blog, Paolo wrote:

My fine-mapping attempt of DecodeME was performed using SusieR with Linkage Disequilibrium matrices from the original UK Biobank (downloaded from the Broad Institute repository). In order to use them, I had to lift over the DecodeME summary statistics from GRCh38 to GRCh37. This is not a perfect approach because there is a loss of about half of the variants. But it is the best I could do...

This is curious. When using the GenomicRanges and rtracklayer packages in R we only lost about 25.000 variants out of almost 9 million. FUMA/MAGMA report the same in the log file: “25262 positions did not align with the GRCh37 reference.”

 

[jnmaciuch]

I have nowhere close to enough time to look yet... is this mitochondrially encoded genes or mitochondrially localised gene products? Or just with some association with mitochondrially relevant pathways?

I think the third, though I don’t specifically know in what way it’s mitochondrially relevant. It’s a transcription factor

 

[Snow Leopard]

I have nowhere close to enough time to look yet... is this mitochondrially encoded genes or mitochondrially localised gene products? Or just with some association with mitochondrially relevant pathways?

The latter latter