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Samantha Harker

Samantha Harker

Neuroscience PhD researcher at Arizona State University specializing in autism, aging, and autistic women

Jun 14, 2026

16:36
But again, these need to be kind of looked at in a larger, you know, study.
16:41
Manny did a really good job talking about the contribution of rare variants.
16:45
And there's kind of this tradeoff between frequency and effect when you talk about those.
16:50
And so the effects of the rare variants can be very impactful.
16:55
But the tradeoff is then frequency, which can make it really difficult to study because oftentimes rare variants are present in less than about 1% of the population, whereas common genetic variants are present in more than 1% of the population, making them easier to study, but then the trade-off of that is that they have these low effects.
17:15
And so what Manny got to present at the INSAR conference was these preliminary results regarding the contribution of common genetic variants implicated in Parkinson's disease in our autistic cohort.
17:30
And so what we saw through a quartile approach was that individuals in the highest genetic risk quartile, meaning that they're in the top 25% of genetic risk for Parkinson's disease.

10 MINS LATER

27:59
Samantha, what are your thoughts?

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