Abstract
Objective Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have discovered over 100 RA loci, explaining patient-relevant RA pathogenesis but showing a large fraction of missing heritability. As a continuous effort, we conducted GWAS in a large Korean RA case-control population. Methods We newly generated genome-wide variant data in two independent Korean cohorts comprising 4068 RA cases and 36 487 controls, followed by a whole-genome imputation and a meta-analysis of the disease association results in the two cohorts. By integrating publicly available omics data with the GWAS results, a series of bioinformatic analyses were conducted to prioritise the RA-risk genes in RA loci and to dissect biological mechanisms underlying disease associations. Results We identified six new RA-risk loci (SLAMF6, CXCL13, SWAP70, NFKBIA, ZFP36L1 and LINC00158) with p meta <5×10 -8 and consistent disease effect sizes in the two cohorts. A total of 122 genes were prioritised from the 6 novel and 13 replicated RA loci based on physical distance, regulatory variants and chromatin interaction. Bioinformatics analyses highlighted potentially RA-relevant tissues (including immune tissues, lung and small intestine) with tissue-specific expression of RA-associated genes and suggested the immune-related gene sets (such as CD40 pathway, IL-21-mediated pathway and citrullination) and the risk-allele sharing with other diseases. Conclusion This study identified six new RA-associated loci that contributed to better understanding of the genetic aetiology and biology in RA.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1438-1445 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases |
Volume | 79 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Nov 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020.
Keywords
- arthritis
- autoimmune diseases
- genetic
- polymorphism
- rheumatoid