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. 2017 Feb;49(2):269-273.
doi: 10.1038/ng.3745. Epub 2016 Dec 19.

Genome-wide association study of primary sclerosing cholangitis identifies new risk loci and quantifies the genetic relationship with inflammatory bowel disease

Sun-Gou Ji  1 Brian D Juran  2 Sören Mucha  3 Trine Folseraas  4   5   6 Luke Jostins  7   8 Espen Melum  4   5 Natsuhiko Kumasaka  1 Elizabeth J Atkinson  9 Erik M Schlicht  2 Jimmy Z Liu  1 Tejas Shah  1 Javier Gutierrez-Achury  1 Kirsten M Boberg  4   6   10 Annika Bergquist  11 Severine Vermeire  12   13 Bertus Eksteen  14 Peter R Durie  15 Martti Farkkila  16 Tobias Müller  17 Christoph Schramm  18 Martina Sterneck  19 Tobias J Weismüller  20   21   22 Daniel N Gotthardt  23 David Ellinghaus  3 Felix Braun  24 Andreas Teufel  25 Mattias Laudes  26 Wolfgang Lieb  27 Gunnar Jacobs  27 Ulrich Beuers  28 Rinse K Weersma  29 Cisca Wijmenga  30 Hanns-Ulrich Marschall  31 Piotr Milkiewicz  32 Albert Pares  33 Kimmo Kontula  34 Olivier Chazouillères  35 Pietro Invernizzi  36 Elizabeth Goode  37 Kelly Spiess  37 Carmel Moore  38   39 Jennifer Sambrook  39   40 Willem H Ouwehand  1   38   40   41 David J Roberts  38   42   43 John Danesh  1   38   39 Annarosa Floreani  44 Aliya F Gulamhusein  2 John E Eaton  2 Stefan Schreiber  3   45 Catalina Coltescu  46 Christopher L Bowlus  47 Velimir A Luketic  48 Joseph A Odin  49 Kapil B Chopra  50 Kris V Kowdley  51 Naga Chalasani  52 Michael P Manns  20   21 Brijesh Srivastava  37 George Mells  37   53 Richard N Sandford  37 Graeme Alexander  54 Daniel J Gaffney  1 Roger W Chapman  55 Gideon M Hirschfield  56   57 Mariza de Andrade  9 UK-PSC ConsortiumInternational IBD Genetics ConsortiumInternational PSC Study GroupSimon M Rushbrook  37 Andre Franke  3 Tom H Karlsen  4   5   6   10 Konstantinos N Lazaridis  2 Carl A Anderson  1
Affiliations

Genome-wide association study of primary sclerosing cholangitis identifies new risk loci and quantifies the genetic relationship with inflammatory bowel disease

Sun-Gou Ji et al. Nat Genet. 2017 Feb.

Abstract

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare progressive disorder leading to bile duct destruction; ∼75% of patients have comorbid inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We undertook the largest genome-wide association study of PSC (4,796 cases and 19,955 population controls) and identified four new genome-wide significant loci. The most associated SNP at one locus affects splicing and expression of UBASH3A, with the protective allele (C) predicted to cause nonstop-mediated mRNA decay and lower expression of UBASH3A. Further analyses based on common variants suggested that the genome-wide genetic correlation (rG) between PSC and ulcerative colitis (UC) (rG = 0.29) was significantly greater than that between PSC and Crohn's disease (CD) (rG = 0.04) (P = 2.55 × 10-15). UC and CD were genetically more similar to each other (rG = 0.56) than either was to PSC (P < 1.0 × 10-15). Our study represents a substantial advance in understanding of the genetics of PSC.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Financial Interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Odds ratios (and their 95% confidence intervals) for PSC, UC and CD across the 6 PSC associated SNPs demonstrating strong evidence for a shared causal variant (maximum posterior probability > 0.8)
PSC ORs were taken from the GWAS and replication meta-analysis. UC and CD ORs were obtained from the latest association studies conducted by the International IBD Genetics Consortium. Heterogeneity of odds tests were carried out using Cochran’s Q test. A failure to detect significant heterogeneity of odds does not necessarily indicate that effect sizes are equivalent because power to detect heterogeneity varies across SNPs.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Genome-wide genetic correlation between PSC (and its subphenotypes), CD and UC
Genetic correlations (and their 95% confidence intervals) were calculated using a bivariate extension of the linear mixed model implemented in GCTA (Online Methods). PSC has a lower genetic correlation with both CD and UC than the two inflammatory bowel diseases have to each other. PSC is genetically more correlated to UC than it is to CD and this is consistent across the PSC subphenotypes.

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