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Genome-wide association study identifies eight new susceptibility loci for atopic dermatitis in the Japanese population

Abstract

Atopic dermatitis is a common inflammatory skin disease caused by interaction of genetic and environmental factors. On the basis of data from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and a validation study comprising a total of 3,328 subjects with atopic dermatitis and 14,992 controls in the Japanese population, we report here 8 new susceptibility loci: IL1RL1-IL18R1-IL18RAP (Pcombined = 8.36 × 10−18), the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region (P = 8.38 × 10−20), OR10A3-NLRP10 (P = 1.54 × 10−22), GLB1 (P = 2.77 × 10−16), CCDC80 (P = 1.56 × 10−19), CARD11 (P = 7.83 × 10−9), ZNF365 (P = 5.85 × 10−20) and CYP24A1-PFDN4 (P = 1.65 × 10−8). We also replicated the associations of the FLG, C11orf30, TMEM232-SLC25A46, TNFRSF6B-ZGPAT, OVOL1, ACTL9 and KIF3A-IL13 loci that were previously reported in GWAS of European and Chinese individuals and a meta-analysis of GWAS for atopic dermatitis. These findings advance the understanding of the genetic basis of atopic dermatitis.

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Figure 1: Manhattan plot showing the −log10P values of 606,164 SNPs in the GWAS for 1,472 Japanese atopic dermatitis cases and 7,971 controls plotted against their respective positions on autosomes and the X chromosome.
Figure 2: Regional plots of association results within eight newly identified susceptibility regions for atopic dermatitis.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the individuals who participated in the study and also thank the collaborating physicians for helping with sample collection. We are grateful to the members of BioBank Japan and the Rotary Club of Osaka-Midosuji District 2660 Rotary International in Japan for supporting our study. We thank M.T. Shimizu, H. Sekiguchi, A.I. Jodo, N. Kawaraichi and the technical staff of the Center for Genomic Medicine for providing technical assistance and K. Barrymore for proofreading this manuscript. This work was conducted as part of the BioBank Japan Project, which is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. This work was also partly supported by grants from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

T.H. and M.T. designed the study and drafted the manuscript. A.T. and T.T. analyzed the GWAS data. T.H., K.T., S. Tanaka and M.K. performed the genotyping for the GWAS. M.S., T.Y., S.F., S.D., A.M., T. Enomoto, C.N., N.N., K.M., S.I., K.O., H.O., E.N., T. Sakamoto, N.H., K.E., H.S., T. Sasaki, T. Ebihara, M.A., S. Takeuchi and M.F. recruited subjects and participated in the diagnostic evaluations. M.T. wrote the manuscript. M.K. and Y.N. contributed to the overall GWAS study design.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mayumi Tamari.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Hirota, T., Takahashi, A., Kubo, M. et al. Genome-wide association study identifies eight new susceptibility loci for atopic dermatitis in the Japanese population. Nat Genet 44, 1222–1226 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2438

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