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- Namkoong, H, et al.
(author)
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DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19
- 2022
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In: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-4687 .- 0028-0836. ; 609:7928, s. 754-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge1–5. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2,393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3,289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target.
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- Sumpter, N. A., et al.
(author)
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Association of Gout Polygenic Risk Score With Age at Disease Onset and Tophaceous Disease in European and Polynesian Men With Gout
- 2023
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In: Arthritis & Rheumatology. - : Wiley. - 2326-5191 .- 2326-5205. ; 75:5, s. 816-825
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Objective. To determine whether a gout polygenic risk score (PRS) is associated with age at gout onset and tophaceous disease in European, East Polynesian, and West Polynesian men and women with gout. Methods. A 19-variant gout PRS was produced in 7 European gout cohorts (N = 4,016), 2 East Polynesian gout cohorts (N = 682), and 1 West Polynesian gout cohort (N = 490). Sex-stratified regression models were used to estimate the relationship between the PRS and age at gout onset and tophaceous disease. Results. The PRS was associated with earlier age at gout onset in men (beta = -3.61 in years per unit PRS [95% confidence interval (95% CI) -4.32, -2.90] in European men; beta = -6.35 [95% CI -8.91, -3.80] in East Polynesian men; beta = -3.51 [95% CI -5.46, -1.57] in West Polynesian men) but not in women (beta = 0.07 [95% CI -2.32, 2.45] in European women; beta = 0.20 [95% CI -7.21, 7.62] in East Polynesian women; beta -3.33 [95% CI -9.28, 2.62] in West Polynesian women). The PRS showed a positive association with tophaceous disease in men (odds ratio [OR] for the association 1.15 [95% CI 1.00, 1.31] in European men; OR 2.60 [95% CI 1.66, 4.06] in East Polynesian men; OR 1.53 [95% CI 1.07, 2.19] in West Polynesian men) but not in women (OR for the association 0.68 [95% CI 0.42, 1.10] in European women; OR 1.45 [95% CI 0.39, 5.36] in East Polynesian women). The PRS association with age at gout onset was robust to the removal of ABCG2 variants from the PRS in European and East Polynesian men (beta = -2.42 [95% CI -3.37, -1.46] and beta = -6.80 [95% CI -10.06, -3.55], respectively) but not in West Polynesian men (beta = -1.79 [95% CI -4.74, 1.16]). Conclusion. Genetic risk variants for gout also harbor risk for earlier age at gout onset and tophaceous disease in European and Polynesian men. Our findings suggest that earlier gout onset involves the accumulation of gout risk alleles in men but perhaps not in women, and that this genetic risk is shared across multiple ancestral groups.
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| 8. |
- Liu, JJ, et al.
(author)
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Germline HOXB13 mutations p.G84E and p.R217C do not confer an increased breast cancer risk
- 2020
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In: Scientific reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 10:1, s. 9688-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In breast cancer, high levels of homeobox protein Hox-B13 (HOXB13) have been associated with disease progression of ER-positive breast cancer patients and resistance to tamoxifen treatment. Since HOXB13 p.G84E is a prostate cancer risk allele, we evaluated the association between HOXB13 germline mutations and breast cancer risk in a previous study consisting of 3,270 familial non-BRCA1/2 breast cancer cases and 2,327 controls from the Netherlands. Although both recurrent HOXB13 mutations p.G84E and p.R217C were not associated with breast cancer risk, the risk estimation for p.R217C was not very precise. To provide more conclusive evidence regarding the role of HOXB13 in breast cancer susceptibility, we here evaluated the association between HOXB13 mutations and increased breast cancer risk within 81 studies of the international Breast Cancer Association Consortium containing 68,521 invasive breast cancer patients and 54,865 controls. Both HOXB13 p.G84E and p.R217C did not associate with the development of breast cancer in European women, neither in the overall analysis (OR = 1.035, 95% CI = 0.859–1.246, P = 0.718 and OR = 0.798, 95% CI = 0.482–1.322, P = 0.381 respectively), nor in specific high-risk subgroups or breast cancer subtypes. Thus, although involved in breast cancer progression, HOXB13 is not a material breast cancer susceptibility gene.
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- Dareng, EO, et al.
(author)
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Polygenic risk modeling for prediction of epithelial ovarian cancer risk
- 2022
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In: European journal of human genetics : EJHG. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-5438 .- 1018-4813. ; 30:3, s. 349-362
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have the potential to improve risk stratification. Joint estimation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) effects in models could improve predictive performance over standard approaches of PRS construction. Here, we implemented computationally efficient, penalized, logistic regression models (lasso, elastic net, stepwise) to individual level genotype data and a Bayesian framework with continuous shrinkage, “select and shrink for summary statistics” (S4), to summary level data for epithelial non-mucinous ovarian cancer risk prediction. We developed the models in a dataset consisting of 23,564 non-mucinous EOC cases and 40,138 controls participating in the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) and validated the best models in three populations of different ancestries: prospective data from 198,101 women of European ancestries; 7,669 women of East Asian ancestries; 1,072 women of African ancestries, and in 18,915 BRCA1 and 12,337 BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers of European ancestries. In the external validation data, the model with the strongest association for non-mucinous EOC risk derived from the OCAC model development data was the S4 model (27,240 SNPs) with odds ratios (OR) of 1.38 (95% CI: 1.28–1.48, AUC: 0.588) per unit standard deviation, in women of European ancestries; 1.14 (95% CI: 1.08–1.19, AUC: 0.538) in women of East Asian ancestries; 1.38 (95% CI: 1.21–1.58, AUC: 0.593) in women of African ancestries; hazard ratios of 1.36 (95% CI: 1.29–1.43, AUC: 0.592) in BRCA1 pathogenic variant carriers and 1.49 (95% CI: 1.35–1.64, AUC: 0.624) in BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers. Incorporation of the S4 PRS in risk prediction models for ovarian cancer may have clinical utility in ovarian cancer prevention programs.
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- Chen, Zhishan, et al.
(author)
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Fine-mapping analysis including over 254 000 East Asian and European descendants identifies 136 putative colorectal cancer susceptibility genes
- 2024
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In: Nature Communications. - : Springer Nature. - 2041-1723. ; 15:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 200 common genetic variants independently associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) risk, but the causal variants and target genes are mostly unknown. We sought to fine-map all known CRC risk loci using GWAS data from 100,204 cases and 154,587 controls of East Asian and European ancestry. Our stepwise conditional analyses revealed 238 independent association signals of CRC risk, each with a set of credible causal variants (CCVs), of which 28 signals had a single CCV. Our cis-eQTL/mQTL and colocalization analyses using colorectal tissue-specific transcriptome and methylome data separately from 1299 and 321 individuals, along with functional genomic investigation, uncovered 136 putative CRC susceptibility genes, including 56 genes not previously reported. Analyses of single-cell RNA-seq data from colorectal tissues revealed 17 putative CRC susceptibility genes with distinct expression patterns in specific cell types. Analyses of whole exome sequencing data provided additional support for several target genes identified in this study as CRC susceptibility genes. Enrichment analyses of the 136 genes uncover pathways not previously linked to CRC risk. Our study substantially expanded association signals for CRC and provided additional insight into the biological mechanisms underlying CRC development.
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| 21. |
- Park, J, et al.
(author)
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Gene-Environment Interactions Relevant to Estrogen and Risk of Breast Cancer: Can Gene-Environment Interactions Be Detected Only among Candidate SNPs from Genome-Wide Association Studies?
- 2021
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In: Cancers. - : MDPI AG. - 2072-6694. ; 13:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this study we aim to examine gene–environment interactions (GxEs) between genes involved with estrogen metabolism and environmental factors related to estrogen exposure. GxE analyses were conducted with 1970 Korean breast cancer cases and 2052 controls in the case-control study, the Seoul Breast Cancer Study (SEBCS). A total of 11,555 SNPs from the 137 candidate genes were included in the GxE analyses with eight established environmental factors. A replication test was conducted by using an independent population from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC), with 62,485 Europeans and 9047 Asians. The GxE tests were performed by using two-step methods in GxEScan software. Two interactions were found in the SEBCS. The first interaction was shown between rs13035764 of NCOA1 and age at menarche in the GE|2df model (p-2df = 1.2 × 10−3). The age at menarche before 14 years old was associated with the high risk of breast cancer, and the risk was higher when subjects had homozygous minor allele G. The second GxE was shown between rs851998 near ESR1 and height in the GE|2df model (p-2df = 1.1 × 10−4). Height taller than 160 cm was associated with a high risk of breast cancer, and the risk increased when the minor allele was added. The findings were not replicated in the BCAC. These results would suggest specificity in Koreans for breast cancer risk.
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| 24. |
- Thomas, Minta, et al.
(author)
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Combining Asian and European genome-wide association studies of colorectal cancer improves risk prediction across racial and ethnic populations
- 2023
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In: Nature Communications. - : Springer Nature. - 2041-1723. ; 14:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Polygenic risk scores (PRS) have great potential to guide precision colorectal cancer (CRC) prevention by identifying those at higher risk to undertake targeted screening. However, current PRS using European ancestry data have sub-optimal performance in non-European ancestry populations, limiting their utility among these populations. Towards addressing this deficiency, we expand PRS development for CRC by incorporating Asian ancestry data (21,731 cases; 47,444 controls) into European ancestry training datasets (78,473 cases; 107,143 controls). The AUC estimates (95% CI) of PRS are 0.63(0.62-0.64), 0.59(0.57-0.61), 0.62(0.60-0.63), and 0.65(0.63-0.66) in independent datasets including 1681-3651 cases and 8696-115,105 controls of Asian, Black/African American, Latinx/Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White, respectively. They are significantly better than the European-centric PRS in all four major US racial and ethnic groups (p-values < 0.05). Further inclusion of non-European ancestry populations, especially Black/African American and Latinx/Hispanic, is needed to improve the risk prediction and enhance equity in applying PRS in clinical practice.
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| 25. |
- Binggeli, Christian, et al.
(author)
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A puzzling non-detection of [O III] and [C II] from a z ≈ 7.7 galaxy observed with ALMA
- 2021
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In: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 646
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Context. Characterizing the galaxy population in the early Universe holds the key to understanding the evolution of these objects and the role they played in cosmic reionization. However, there have been very few observations at the very highest redshifts to date. Aims. In order to shed light on the properties of galaxies in the high-redshift Universe and their interstellar media, we observe the Lyman-α emitting galaxy z7_GSD_3811 at z = 7.664 with bands 6 and 8 at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Methods. We target the far-infrared [O iii] 88 µm and [C ii] 158 µm emission lines and dust continuum in the star-forming galaxy z7_GSD_3811 with ALMA. We combine these measurements with earlier observations in the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) in order to characterize the object and compare the results to those of earlier studies that observed [O iii] and [C ii] emission in high-redshift galaxies. Results. The [O iii] 88 µm and [C ii] 158 µm emission lines are undetected at the position of z7_GSD_3811, with 3σ upper limits of 1.6 × 108 L and 4.0 × 107 L, respectively. We do not detect any dust continuum in band 6 nor band 8. The measured rms in the band 8 and band 6 continua are 26 and 9.9 µJy beam−1, respectively. Similar to several other high-redshift galaxies, z7_GSD_3811 exhibits low [C ii] emission for its star formation rate compared to local galaxies. Furthermore, our upper limit on the [O iii] line luminosity is lower than the previously observed [O iii] lines in high-redshift galaxies with similar UV luminosities. Our ALMA band 6 and 8 dust continuum observations imply that z7_GSD_3811 likely has a low dust content, and our non-detections of the [O iii] and [C ii] lines could indicate that z7_GSD_3811 has a low metallicity (Z. 0.1 Z).
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