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Meta-Analysis
. 2013 Oct 18;8(10):e75951.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075951. eCollection 2013.

Measles contributes to rheumatoid arthritis: evidence from pathway and network analyses of genome-wide association studies

Guiyou Liu  1 , Yongshuai Jiang, Xiaoguang Chen, Ruijie Zhang, Guoda Ma, Rennan Feng, Liangcai Zhang, Mingzhi Liao, Yingbo Miao, Zugen Chen, Rong Zeng, Keshen Li
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Measles contributes to rheumatoid arthritis: evidence from pathway and network analyses of genome-wide association studies

Guiyou Liu et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Growing evidence from epidemiological studies indicates the association between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and measles. However, the exact mechanism for this association is still unclear now. We consider that the strong association between both diseases may be caused by shared genetic pathways. We performed a pathway analysis of large-scale RA genome-wide association studies (GWAS) dataset with 5,539 cases and 20,169 controls of European descent. Meanwhile, we evaluated our findings using previously identified RA loci, protein-protein interaction network and previous results from pathway analysis of RA and other autoimmune diseases GWAS. We confirmed four pathways including Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, Jak-STAT signaling, T cell receptor signaling and Cell adhesion molecules. Meanwhile, we highlighted for the first time the involvement of Measles and Intestinal immune network for IgA production pathways in RA. Our results may explain the strong association between RA and measles, which may be caused by the shared genetic pathway. We believe that our results will be helpful for future genetic studies in RA pathogenesis and may significantly assist in the development of therapeutic strategies.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Flow chart of pathway and network analyses of RA GWAS.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Network of known and predicted interactions between proteins encoded by 57 RA susceptibility genes.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Network of known and predicted interactions between proteins encoded by 394 RA susceptibility genes identified by GWAS.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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