A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants.
Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of >12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly rare, protein-altering variants. Analyzing 16,144 patients and 17,832 controls, we identify 52 independently associated common and rare variants (P < 5 × 10(-8)) distributed across 34 loci. Although wet and dry AMD subtypes exhibit predominantly shared genetics, we identify the first genetic association signal specific to wet AMD, near MMP9 (difference P value = 4.1 × 10(-10)). Very rare coding variants (frequency <0.1%) in CFH, CFI and TIMP3 suggest causal roles for these genes, as does a splice variant in SLC16A8. Our results support the hypothesis that rare coding variants can pinpoint causal genes within known genetic loci and illustrate that applying the approach systematically to detect new loci requires extremely large sample sizes.
Duke Scholars
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- Mutation
- Macular Degeneration
- Humans
- Genome-Wide Association Study
- Genetic Predisposition to Disease
- Developmental Biology
- 3105 Genetics
- 3102 Bioinformatics and computational biology
- 3001 Agricultural biotechnology
- 11 Medical and Health Sciences
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Location
Related Subject Headings
- Mutation
- Macular Degeneration
- Humans
- Genome-Wide Association Study
- Genetic Predisposition to Disease
- Developmental Biology
- 3105 Genetics
- 3102 Bioinformatics and computational biology
- 3001 Agricultural biotechnology
- 11 Medical and Health Sciences