Identification of Immune-relevant Factors Conferring Sarcoidosis Genetic Risk.

Authors:
Annegret Fischer, David Ellinghaus, Marcel Nutsua, Sylvia Hofmann, Courtney G Montgomery, Michael C Iannuzzi, Benjamin A Rybicki, Martin Petrek, Frantisek Mrazek, Stefan Pabst, Christian Grohé, Johan Grunewald, Marcus Ronninger, Anders Eklund, Leonid Padyukov, Violeta Mihailovic-Vucinic, Dragana Jovanovic, Martina Sterclova, Jiri Homolka, Markus M Nöthen, Stefan Herms, Christian Gieger, Konstantin Strauch, Juliane Winkelmann, Bernhard O Boehm, Stephan Brand, Carsten Büning, Manfred Schürmann, Eva Ellinghaus, Hansjörg Baurecht, Wolfgang Lieb, Almut Nebel, Joachim Müller-Quernheim, Andre Franke, Stefan Schreiber, - -
Year of publication:
2015
Volume:
-
Issue:
-
Issn:
1073-449X
Journal title abbreviated:
AM J RESP CRIT CARE
Journal title long:
American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine
Impact factor:
30.528
Abstract:
To define further genetic risk loci for sarcoidosis, we used the Immunochip for a candidate gene association study of immune-associated loci.Altogether the study population comprised over 19,000 individuals. In a two-stage design, 1726 German sarcoidosis cases and 5482 controls were genotyped for 128,705 SNPs using the Illumina Immunochip for the screening step. The remaining 3955 cases, 7514 controls and 684 parents of affected offspring were used for validation and replication of 44 candidate and 2 established risk SNPs.Four novel susceptibility loci were identified with genome-wide significance in the European case control populations, located on chromosomes 12q24.12 (rs653178; ATXN2/SH2B3), 5q33.3 (rs4921492; IL12B), 4q24 (rs223498; MANBA/NFKB1) and 2q33.2 (rs6748088; FAM117B). We further defined three independent association signals in the HLA-region with genome-wide significance, peaking in the BTNL2 promoter region (rs5007259), at HLA-B (rs4143332/HLA-B*0801) and at HLA DPB1 (rs9277542), and found another novel independent signal near IL23R (rs12069782) on chromosome 1p31.3.Functional predictions and protein network analyses suggest a prominent role of the drug-targetable IL23/Th17-signaling pathway in the genetic etiology of sarcoidosis. Our findings reveal a substantial genetic overlap of sarcoidosis with diverse immune-mediated inflammatory disorders, which could be of relevance for the clinical application of modern therapeutics.Genetic variation plays a significant role in the etiology of sarcoidosis. However, only a small fraction of its heritability has been explained so far.To define further genetic risk loci for sarcoidosis, we used the Immunochip for a candidate gene association study of immune-associated loci.