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Meta-Analysis
. 2024 Jan 10;4(1):100468.
doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100468. Epub 2023 Dec 22.

Genome-wide study investigating effector genes and polygenic prediction for kidney function in persons with ancestry from Africa and the Americas

Odessica Hughes  1 Amy R Bentley  2 Charles E Breeze  3 Francois Aguet  4 Xiaoguang Xu  5 Girish Nadkarni  6 Quan Sun  7 Bridget M Lin  7 Thomas Gilliland  8 Mariah C Meyer  9 Jiawen Du  7 Laura M Raffield  10 Holly Kramer  11 Robert W Morton  12 Mateus H Gouveia  2 Elizabeth G Atkinson  13 Adan Valladares-Salgado  14 Niels Wacher-Rodarte  15 Nicole D Dueker  16 Xiuqing Guo  17 Yang Hai  17 Adebowale Adeyemo  2 Lyle G Best  18 Jianwen Cai  7 Guanjie Chen  2 Michael Chong  12 Ayo Doumatey  2 James Eales  5 Mark O Goodarzi  19 Eli Ipp  20 Marguerite Ryan Irvin  21 Minzhi Jiang  22 Alana C Jones  21 Charles Kooperberg  23 Jose E Krieger  24 Ethan M Lange  9 Matthew B Lanktree  25 James P Lash  26 Paulo A Lotufo  27 Ruth J F Loos  28 Vy Thi Ha My  6 Jesús Peralta-Romero  14 Lihong Qi  29 Leslie J Raffel  30 Stephen S Rich  31 Erik J Rodriquez  32 Eduardo Tarazona-Santos  33 Kent D Taylor  17 Jason G Umans  34 Jia Wen  10 Bessie A Young  35 Zhi Yu  36 Ying Zhang  37 Yii-Der Ida Chen  17 Tanja Rundek  38 Jerome I Rotter  17 Miguel Cruz  14 Myriam Fornage  39 Maria Fernanda Lima-Costa  40 Alexandre C Pereira  41 Guillaume Paré  12 Pradeep Natarajan  8 Shelley A Cole  42 April P Carson  43 Leslie A Lange  9 Yun Li  7 Eliseo J Perez-Stable  44 Ron Do  6 Fadi J Charchar  45 Maciej Tomaszewski  46 Josyf C Mychaleckyj  29 Charles Rotimi  2 Andrew P Morris  47 Nora Franceschini  48
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Genome-wide study investigating effector genes and polygenic prediction for kidney function in persons with ancestry from Africa and the Americas

Odessica Hughes et al. Cell Genom. .

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease is a leading cause of death and disability globally and impacts individuals of African ancestry (AFR) or with ancestry in the Americas (AMS) who are under-represented in genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of kidney function. To address this bias, we conducted a large meta-analysis of GWASs of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) in 145,732 AFR and AMS individuals. We identified 41 loci at genome-wide significance (p < 5 × 10-8), of which two have not been previously reported in any ancestry group. We integrated fine-mapped loci with epigenomic and transcriptomic resources to highlight potential effector genes relevant to kidney physiology and disease, and reveal key regulatory elements and pathways involved in renal function and development. We demonstrate the varying but increased predictive power offered by a multi-ancestry polygenic score for eGFR and highlight the importance of population diversity in GWASs and multi-omics resources to enhance opportunities for clinical translation for all.

Keywords: admixed populations; chronic kidney disease; eGFR; expression quantitative trait locus; fine-mapping; genome-wide association study; kidney function; multi-ancestry; polygenic scores.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests P.N. reports investigator-initiated research grants from Allelica, Apple, Amgen, Boston Scientific, Genentech/Roche, and Novartis, personal fees from Allelica, Apple, AstraZeneca, Blackstone Life Sciences, Eli Lilly & Co, Foresite Labs, Genentech/Roche, GV, HeartFlow, Magnet Biomedicine, and Novartis, scientific advisory board membership of Esperion Therapeutics, Preciseli, and TenSixteen Bio, scientific co-founder of TenSixteen Bio, equity in MyOme, Preciseli, and TenSixteen Bio, and spousal employment at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, all unrelated to the present work. M.B.L. has received speaker and advisory fees from Otsuka, Reata, Bayer, and Sanofi Genzyme. G.P. has received speaker and advisory fees from Amgen, Bayer, Novartis, and Sanofi, and has received research grants from Bayer and Sanofi. L.M.R. is a consultant for the TOPMed Administrative Coordinating Center (through Westat).

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Analytical pipeline In step 1, we conducted multi-ancestry meta-analysis of eGFR GWAS in 145,732 AFR and AMS individuals from the COGENT Kidney Consortium and Million Veteran Program (MVP). In step 2, we performed downstream integration with functional genomics resources to understand the effector genes and molecular mechanisms through which eGFR association signals are mediated. These analyses included correlation with eQTL in kidney from the Human Kidney Tissue Resource and The Cancer Genome Atlas, and in blood from the Genes-Environments and Admixture in Latino Asthmatics study and the Study of African Americans, Asthma, Genes, and Environments, and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. In step 3, we assessed evidence of heterogeneity in allelic effects at eGFR association signals that is driven by sex and/or ancestry. In step 4, we constructed ancestry-specific and multi-ancestry polygenic scores to assess transferability into AFR and AMS individuals.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Manhattan plot and quantile-quantile (QQ) plot of genome-wide eGFR association from combined meta-analysis of up to 145,732 AFR and AMS individuals In the Manhattan plot, each point represents an SNV passing quality control in the meta-analysis, plotted with their observed association p value (on a –log10 scale) as a function of genomic position (NCBI build 37). The genome-wide significance threshold (p < 5 × 10−8) is highlighted by the horizontal red line. The names and locations of novel loci are indicated. In the QQ plot, each point represents an SNV passing quality control in the meta-analysis, plotted with the observed association p value (on a –log10 scale) as a function of their expected association p value (on a –log10 scale).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Genomic variants associated with eGFR highlight kidney regulatory elements Shown are the results of FORGE2 analysis for the top 1,000 eGFR SNVs. The horizontal axis shows FORGE2 enrichment (–log10 p value) of the eGFR SNV set with DNase I hotspots for a range of cell and tissue samples (vertical axis, significant samples in black). The top ranked sample set (highest black points) indicate the most significant association is for kidney samples (i.e., are highly ranked for the top 1,000 SNVs associated with eGFR).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Transferability of multi-ancestry and ancestry-specific polygenic scores for eGFR into AFR and AMS test GWAS Polygenic scores were constructed using PRS-CS, and their performance assessed in eight test GWASs. For each test GWAS, five polygenic scores were constructed: multi-ancestry (AFR + AMS), AFR specific, AMS specific, East Asian (EAS) specific from BioBank Japan, and European (EUR) specific from the CKDGen Consortium. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) was matched to the ancestry of the test GWAS. The eGFR variance explained by each polygenic score was estimated in each test GWAS. The relative performance of the polygenic scores varied across test GWAS. The multi-ancestry (AFR + AMS) and AFR-specific polygenic scores explained the highest proportion of eGFR variance in African American test GWAS (REGARDS, WHI-AA, BIOME-AA). In contrast, the EUR-specific polygenic score explained the highest proportion of eGFR variance in the AMS test GWAS (BIOME-HA, HCHS/SOL-MAIN, BAMBUI, SHS). All polygenic scores explained a low proportion of eGFR variance in West Africans from Nigeria and Ghana (AADM).

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