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- Newton-Cheh, Christopher, et al.
(author)
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Genome-wide association study identifies eight loci associated with blood pressure
- 2009
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In: Nature Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1546-1718 .- 1061-4036. ; 41:6, s. 666-676
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Elevated blood pressure is a common, heritable cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide. To date, identification of common genetic variants influencing blood pressure has proven challenging. We tested 2.5 million genotyped and imputed SNPs for association with systolic and diastolic blood pressure in 34,433 subjects of European ancestry from the Global BPgen consortium and followed up findings with direct genotyping (N <= 71,225 European ancestry, N <= 12,889 Indian Asian ancestry) and in silico comparison (CHARGE consortium, N 29,136). We identified association between systolic or diastolic blood pressure and common variants in eight regions near the CYP17A1 (P = 7 x 10(-24)), CYP1A2 (P = 1 x 10(-23)), FGF5 (P = 1 x 10(-21)), SH2B3 (P = 3 x 10(-18)), MTHFR (P = 2 x 10(-13)), c10orf107 (P = 1 x 10(-9)), ZNF652 (P = 5 x 10(-9)) and PLCD3 (P = 1 x 10(-8)) genes. All variants associated with continuous blood pressure were associated with dichotomous hypertension. These associations between common variants and blood pressure and hypertension offer mechanistic insights into the regulation of blood pressure and may point to novel targets for interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease.
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| 2. |
- Graham, R. Robert, et al.
(author)
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Three functional variants of IFN regulatory factor 5 (IRF5) define risk and protective haplotypes for human lupus
- 2007
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 104:16, s. 6758-6763
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Systematic genome-wide studies to map genomic regions associated with human diseases are becoming more practical. Increasingly, efforts will be focused on the identification of the specific functional variants responsible for the disease. The challenges of identifying causal variants include the need for complete ascertainment of genetic variants and the need to consider the possibility of multiple causal alleles. We recently reported that risk of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is strongly associated with a common SNP in IFN regulatory factor 5 (IRF5), and that this variant altered spicing in a way that might provide a functional explanation for the reproducible association to SLE risk. Here, by resequencing and genotyping in patients with SLE, we find evidence for three functional alleles of IRF5: the previously described exon 1B splice site variant, a 30-bp in-frame insertion/deletion variant of exon 6 that alters a proline-, glutamic acid-, serine- and threonine-rich domain region, and a variant in a conserved polyA+ signal sequence that alters the length of the 3' UTR and stability of IRF5 mRNAs. Haplotypes of these three variants define at least three distinct levels of risk to SLE. Understanding how combinations of variants influence IRF5 function may offer etiological and therapeutic insights in SLE; more generally, IRF5 and SLE illustrates how multiple common variants of the same gene can together influence risk of common disease.
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| 3. |
- Parikh, Hemang, et al.
(author)
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TXNIP regulates peripheral glucose metabolism in humans
- 2007
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In: PLoS Medicine. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1549-1676. ; 4:5, s. 868-879
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background Type 2 diabetes mellitus ( T2DM) is characterized by defects in insulin secretion and action. Impaired glucose uptake in skeletal muscle is believed to be one of the earliest features in the natural history of T2DM, although underlying mechanisms remain obscure. Methods and Findings We combined human insulin/glucose clamp physiological studies with genome-wide expression profiling to identify thioredoxin interacting protein ( TXNIP) as a gene whose expression is powerfully suppressed by insulin yet stimulated by glucose. In healthy individuals, its expression was inversely correlated to total body measures of glucose uptake. Forced expression of TXNIP in cultured adipocytes significantly reduced glucose uptake, while silencing with RNA interference in adipocytes and in skeletal muscle enhanced glucose uptake, confirming that the gene product is also a regulator of glucose uptake. TXNIP expression is consistently elevated in the muscle of prediabetics and diabetics, although in a panel of 4,450 Scandinavian individuals, we found no evidence for association between common genetic variation in the TXNIP gene and T2DM. Conclusions TXNIP regulates both insulin-dependent and insulin- independent pathways of glucose uptake in human skeletal muscle. Combined with recent studies that have implicated TXNIP in pancreatic beta-cell glucose toxicity, our data suggest that TXNIP might play a key role in defective glucose homeostasis preceding overt T2DM.
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