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Meta-Analysis
. 2018 May 14;9(1):1864.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03646-6.

Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases

Adriana I Iglesias  1   2   3 Aniket Mishra  4 Veronique Vitart  5 Yelena Bykhovskaya  6   7 René Höhn  8   9 Henriët Springelkamp  1 Gabriel Cuellar-Partida  10 Puya Gharahkhani  10 Jessica N Cooke Bailey  11   12 Colin E Willoughby  13   14 Xiaohui Li  15   16 Seyhan Yazar  5   17 Abhishek Nag  18 Anthony P Khawaja  19   20 Ozren Polašek  21 David Siscovick  22   23 Paul Mitchell  24 Yih Chung Tham  25 Jonathan L Haines  11   12 Lisa S Kearns  26 Caroline Hayward  5 Yuan Shi  25 Elisabeth M van Leeuwen  1 Kent D Taylor  15   16 Blue Mountains Eye Study—GWAS groupPieter Bonnemaijer  1 Jerome I Rotter  15   16 Nicholas G Martin  27 Tanja Zeller  28   29 Richard A Mills  30 Emmanuelle Souzeau  30 Sandra E Staffieri  26 Jost B Jonas  31 Irene Schmidtmann  32 Thibaud Boutin  5 Jae H Kang  33 Sionne E M Lucas  34 Tien Yin Wong  25   35   36 Manfred E Beutel  37 James F Wilson  5   38 NEIGHBORHOOD ConsortiumWellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2 (WTCCC2)André G Uitterlinden  2   39   40 Eranga N Vithana  25 Paul J Foster  20 Pirro G Hysi  18 Alex W Hewitt  26   41 Chiea Chuen Khor  42 Louis R Pasquale  33   43 Grant W Montgomery  27   44 Caroline C W Klaver  1   2   45 Tin Aung  25   35   36 Norbert Pfeiffer  8 David A Mackey  17 Christopher J Hammond  18 Ching-Yu Cheng  25   35   36 Jamie E Craig  30 Yaron S Rabinowitz  6   7 Janey L Wiggs  43 Kathryn P Burdon  34 Cornelia M van Duijn  2 Stuart MacGregor  46
Collaborators, Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases

Adriana I Iglesias et al. Nat Commun. .

Erratum in

  • Author Correction: Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases.
    Iglesias AI, Mishra A, Vitart V, Bykhovskaya Y, Höhn R, Springelkamp H, Cuellar-Partida G, Gharahkhani P, Bailey JNC, Willoughby CE, Li X, Yazar S, Nag A, Khawaja AP, Polašek O, Siscovick D, Mitchell P, Tham YC, Haines JL, Kearns LS, Hayward C, Shi Y, van Leeuwen EM, Taylor KD; Blue Mountains Eye Study - GWAS group; Bonnemaijer P, Rotter JI, Martin NG, Zeller T, Mills RA, Souzeau E, Staffieri SE, Jonas JB, Schmidtmann I, Boutin T, Kang JH, Lucas SEM, Wong TY, Beutel ME, Wilson JF; Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2 (WTCCC2); NEIGHBORHOOD consortium; Uitterlinden AG, Vithana EN, Foster PJ, Hysi PG, Hewitt AW, Khor CC, Pasquale LR, Montgomery GW, Klaver CCW, Aung T, Pfeiffer N, Mackey DA, Hammond CJ, Cheng CY, Craig JE, Rabinowitz YS, Wiggs JL, Burdon KP, van Duijn CM, MacGregor S. Iglesias AI, et al. Nat Commun. 2019 Jan 8;10(1):155. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07819-1. Nat Commun. 2019. PMID: 30622277 Free PMC article.

Abstract

Central corneal thickness (CCT) is a highly heritable trait associated with complex eye diseases such as keratoconus and glaucoma. We perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis of CCT and identify 19 novel regions. In addition to adding support for known connective tissue-related pathways, pathway analyses uncover previously unreported gene sets. Remarkably, >20% of the CCT-loci are near or within Mendelian disorder genes. These included FBN1, ADAMTS2 and TGFB2 which associate with connective tissue disorders (Marfan, Ehlers-Danlos and Loeys-Dietz syndromes), and the LUM-DCN-KERA gene complex involved in myopia, corneal dystrophies and cornea plana. Using index CCT-increasing variants, we find a significant inverse correlation in effect sizes between CCT and keratoconus (r = -0.62, P = 5.30 × 10-5) but not between CCT and primary open-angle glaucoma (r = -0.17, P = 0.2). Our findings provide evidence for shared genetic influences between CCT and keratoconus, and implicate candidate genes acting in collagen and extracellular matrix regulation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Manhattan plot of CCT in the cross-ancestry meta-analysis. Manhattan plot of the GWAS meta-analysis for CCT in the cross-ancestry analysis (n = 25,910). The plot shows −log10-transformed P-values for all SNPs. The red horizontal line represents the genome-wide significance threshold of P < 5.0 × 10−8; the blue horizontal line indicates a P-value of 1 × 10−5. Loci are annotated to the nearest gene as in Tables 1 and 2. New loci are in bold
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Correlation of effect sizes between CCT and keratoconus and CCT and primary-open angle glaucoma. Each dot represents a CCT-associated variant. In green, variants that surpassed the Bonferroni-corrected significance threshold (P < 5.56 × 10−4) in the keratoconus analysis (a). In blue, variants that were associated with a nominal level of significance (P < 0.05) in the keratoconus or primary-open angle glaucoma analysis. In gray, variants that did not show association with keratoconus or primary-open angle glaucoma (P > 0.05). a shows correlation of effect sizes between CCT and keratoconus, b shows correlation of effect sizes between CCT and primary-open angle glaucoma

References

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