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Genome-wide association study identifies common variants at TNFRSF13B associated with IgG level in a healthy Chinese male population

Genes & Immunity volume 13, pages 509–513 (2012)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 12 July 2012

This article has been updated

Abstract

IgG has a crucial role in humoral immune response. Serum IgG level is mainly determined under genetic control. To explore the genetic influence on serum IgG levels, a two-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) was performed in a healthy Chinese population of 3495 men, including 1999 unrelated subjects in the first stage and 1496 independent individuals in the second stage. Three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located in TNFRSF13B on 17p11.2 or nearby were significantly associated with IgG level: rs4792800 in the intron (combined P-value=1.45 × 10−12), rs12603708 in the intron (combined P-value=1.82 × 10−8) and rs3751987 at ∼65 kb downstream of the 5′-UTR region of TNFRSF13B (combined P-value=3.67 × 10−9). Additionally, smoking was identified to be associated with IgG level in both stages (P<0.001), but there was no significant interaction between smoking and the identified SNPs (P>0.05). The strong association between variants at TNFRSF13B and IgG level may be helpful to further explore the biological mechanism by which the serum IgG is affected by transmembrane activator, calcium modulator and cyclophilin ligand interactor encoded by TNFRSF13B.

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  • 30 August 2012

    This article has been corrected since Advance Online Publication and a corrigendum is also published in this issue.

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Acknowledgements

We express our sincere thanks to the local research teams from Fangchenggang First People’s Hospital, Fangchenggang, China, for the recruitment of study subjects. We thank Y-M Wu, Y Sun and Z-X Li, for their assistance in the study recruitment. We thank X-W Zou, H-C Zheng and O Li at the Genergy Biotechnology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd, for their assistance in the genotyping. Finally, we thank all study subjects for participating in the study. The work described in this article is supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 30945204) and the Provincial departments of Finance and Education, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China (Grant no. 2009GJCJ150).

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Author notes

  1. M Liao, F Ye, B Zhang, L Huang and Q Xiao: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Urology and Nephrology, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

    M Liao, M Qin, L Mo, Y Gao, Z Lu, C Wu, Y Zhang & Z Mo

  2. Center for Genomic and Personalized Medicine, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

    M Liao, F Ye, B Zhang, L Huang, Q Xiao, A Tan, Y Gao, Z Lu, C Wu, Y Zhang, H Zhang, X Qin, Y Hu, X Yang & Z Mo

  3. Center for Metabolic Disease and Diabetes, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

    A Tan

  4. Department of Occupational Health and Environmental Health, School of Public Health of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

    H Zhang & X Yang

  5. Department of Clinical Laboratory, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

    X Qin

  6. Medical Scientific Research Centre, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

    Y Gao

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  1. M Liao
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Correspondence to X Yang or Z Mo.

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Liao, M., Ye, F., Zhang, B. et al. Genome-wide association study identifies common variants at TNFRSF13B associated with IgG level in a healthy Chinese male population. Genes Immun 13, 509–513 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/gene.2012.26

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