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. 2018 Jun;50(6):857-864.
doi: 10.1038/s41588-018-0121-0. Epub 2018 May 21.

A genome-wide cross-trait analysis from UK Biobank highlights the shared genetic architecture of asthma and allergic diseases

Zhaozhong Zhu  1   2   3 , Phil H Lee  3   4   5 , Mark D Chaffin  4 , Wonil Chung  1 , Po-Ru Loh  1   4 , Quan Lu  6 , David C Christiani  2   7 , Liming Liang  8   9
Affiliations

A genome-wide cross-trait analysis from UK Biobank highlights the shared genetic architecture of asthma and allergic diseases

Zhaozhong Zhu et al. Nat Genet. 2018 Jun.

Erratum in

Abstract

Clinical and epidemiological data suggest that asthma and allergic diseases are associated and may share a common genetic etiology. We analyzed genome-wide SNP data for asthma and allergic diseases in 33,593 cases and 76,768 controls of European ancestry from UK Biobank. Two publicly available independent genome-wide association studies were used for replication. We have found a strong genome-wide genetic correlation between asthma and allergic diseases (rg = 0.75, P = 6.84 × 10-62). Cross-trait analysis identified 38 genome-wide significant loci, including 7 novel shared loci. Computational analysis showed that shared genetic loci are enriched in immune/inflammatory systems and tissues with epithelium cells. Our work identifies common genetic architectures shared between asthma and allergy and will help to advance understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying co-morbid asthma and allergic diseases.

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Conflict of interest statement

COMPETING FINANCIAL INTERESTS

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Partitioned genetic correlation between asthma and allergic diseases in the UK Biobank. Vertical axis represents the genetic correlation estimate Rg (standard error), horizontal axis represents 12 functional categories. Asterisk represents significance (P<0.05). DGF: DNaseI Digital Genomic Footprinting; DHS: DNase I hypersensitivity Site; TFBS: Transcription Factor Binding Sites.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Circus Manhattan plot of cross trait meta-analysis. The first layer of the plot illustrates chromosome position and the second layer illustrates the representative genes of significant loci. Red genes are novel shared genes between asthma and allergic diseases The inside layer illustrates the significance level -log10(P-value) of asthma and allergic diseases’ shared markers from cross trait meta-analysis. Red dots means genome-wide significant (P < 5×10−8). A total of 38 independent loci were identified to be associated with both diseases. Genes at loci in close proximity were assigned one gene label separated by a slash. Sample size for asthma is 90,853, for allergic diseases is 102,453.
Figure 3
Figure 3
GTEx Tissue Specific Expression Analysis (TSEA). The horizontal axis illustrates tissue expression enrichment P-values after Benjamin-Hochberg correction. The vertical axis illustrates 25 independent tissue types from GTEx.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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