Excess of rare variants in genes identified by gen... [Nat Genet. 2010] - PubMed result

Nat Genet. 2010 Aug;42(8):684-7. Epub 2010 Jul 25.

Excess of rare variants in genes identified by genome-wide association study of hypertriglyceridemia.
Johansen CT, Wang J, Lanktree MB, Cao H, McIntyre AD, Ban MR, Martins RA, Kennedy BA, Hassell RG, Visser ME, Schwartz SM, Voight BF, Elosua R, Salomaa V, O'Donnell CJ, Dallinga-Thie GM, Anand SS, Yusuf S, Huff MW, Kathiresan S, Hegele RA.

Department of Biochemistry, Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

Abstract
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified multiple loci associated with plasma lipid concentrations. Common variants at these loci together explain <10% of variation in each lipid trait. Rare variants with large individual effects may also contribute to the heritability of lipid traits; however, the extent to which rare variants affect lipid phenotypes remains to be determined. Here we show an accumulation of rare variants, or a mutation skew, in GWAS-identified genes in individuals with hypertriglyceridemia (HTG). Through GWAS, we identified common variants in APOA5, GCKR, LPL and APOB associated with HTG. Resequencing of these genes revealed a significant burden of 154 rare missense or nonsense variants in 438 individuals with HTG, compared to 53 variants in 327 controls (P = 6.2 x 10(-8)), corresponding to a carrier frequency of 28.1% of affected individuals and 15.3% of controls (P = 2.6 x 10(-5)). Considering rare variants in these genes incrementally increased the proportion of genetic variation contributing to HTG.

PMID: 20657596 [PubMed - in process]
Excess of rare variants in genes identified by gen... [Nat Genet. 2010] - PubMed result