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Dr. Ivan Nikolov

Research Fellow Biostatistics (Psychological Medicine & Epidemiology & Stats)

Research interest

I have studied Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Medical University Sofia (MUS), Bulgaria (1990-1996). In the next three years, I was working as a psychiatrist in two University Hospitals in Sofia. In 1998 started specialist training in psychiatry, Dept. of Psychiatry, Medical University Sofia. Meanwhile I have participated in a project of The National Center for Health Information and Alexandrovska University Hospital Sofia for establishing a clinical and epidemiological database of patients with psychiatric disorders. Since 1998, I have been clinical coordinator for a collaborative project between the UWCM and MUS. The project aimed at collection of 1000 parent-offspring trios in Bulgaria for association studies on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Nearly 900 trios were collected. Among my duties were the establishment and maintenance of phenotypic and genotypic database for the project and statistical genetic analysis.

I am particularly interested in developing database systems. My current activities as a member of BB Unit are related to implementation of an integral database system at the Dept. of Psychological Medicine, UWCM. This system is based on a database server and a web based client application. It is being designed to become a dynamic data store for all ongoing and future phenotypic and genotypic data samples and to facilitate research by automated data manipulation and statistical analysis functions.
After this project is finished, I will be working in the field of statistical genetics, more precisely on developing automation modules for analysis of allelic association and linkage disequilibrium, using haplotyping and multilocus genotyping.

Selected Publications

Dopamine transporter gene (DAT1) VNTR polymorphism in major psychiatric disorders: family-based association study in the Bulgarian population (2002) Georgieva L, Dimitrova A, Nikolov I , Koleva S, Tsvetkova R, Owen MJ, Toncheva D, Kirov G. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica May; 105 (5):396-399.

Major psychiatric disorders and the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4): family based association studies (2002) A Dimitrova, L Georgieva, I Nikolov , N Poriazova, S Krastev, D Toncheva, M J Owen, G Kirov. Psychiatric Genetics Sept; 12 :137-141.

Association analysis of the HOPA 12bp polymorphism in schizophrenia and manic depressive illness. George Kirov, Ludmila Georgieva, Ivan Nikolov , Stan Zammit, Gaynor Jones, Nadezhda Poriazova, Todor Tolev, Richard Owen, Sue Jones, and Michael J Owen, Am J Hum Genet in press

Genetic variation in the seven-pass transmembrane cadherin CELSR1: lack of association with schizophrenia L Georgieva, I Nikolov , N Poriazova, G Jones, D Toncheva, G Kirov and M J Owen , Psychiatric Genetics, in press

Mutation screening and LD mapping in the VCFS deleted region of chromosome 22q11 in schizophrenia using a novel DNA pooling approach (2002). Williams NM, Spurlock G, Norton N, Williams HJ, Hamshere ML, Krawczak M, Kirov G, Nikolov I , Georgieva L, Jones S, Cardno AG, McCarthy G, O'Donovan MC, Owen MJ (2002) Molecular Psychiatry7 (10):1092-1100