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Genome-wide association study identifies multiple susceptibility loci for pulmonary fibrosis

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 29 October 2013

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Abstract

We performed a genome-wide association study of non-Hispanic, white individuals with fibrotic idiopathic interstitial pneumonias (IIPs; n = 1,616) and controls (n = 4,683), with follow-up replication analyses in 876 cases and 1,890 controls. We confirmed association with TERT at 5p15, MUC5B at 11p15 and the 3q26 region near TERC, and we identified seven newly associated loci (Pmeta = 2.4 × 10−8 to 1.1 × 10−19), including FAM13A (4q22), DSP (6p24), OBFC1 (10q24), ATP11A (13q34), DPP9 (19p13) and chromosomal regions 7q22 and 15q14-15. Our results suggest that genes involved in host defense, cell-cell adhesion and DNA repair contribute to risk of fibrotic IIPs.

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Figure 1: GWAS results at 439,828 SNPs with 1,616 cases and 4,683 controls under an additive model.
Figure 2: Locus-specific plots corresponding to discovery GWAS results for all loci reaching genome-wide significance in the GWAS discovery analysis and meta-analysis of the discovery and replication results.
Figure 3: Locus-specific plots corresponding to discovery GWAS results for four additional loci reaching genome-wide significance after the meta-analysis of the discovery and replication results.
Figure 4: Relative expression of DSP in lung tissue from 100 cases and 94 controls.

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Change history

  • 01 October 2013

    In the version of this article initially published, the minor alleles for two SNPs (rs2076295 and rs7934606) were listed incorrectly in Table 1. The correct minor allele for rs2076295 is G, and the correct minor allele for rs7934606 is T. As a result, there were two incorrect statements in the text regarding the relationship between the disease risk allele of rs2076295 and DSP expression. The text should have stated that the allele of rs2076295 associated with increased risk of pulmonary fibrosis is associated with decreased DSP expression rather than increased DSP expression. These errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the individuals who participated in the studies that contributed to this work. This research was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01-HL095393, R01-HL097163, P01-HL092870, RC2-HL101715, U01-HL089897, U01-HL089856, U01-HL108642 and P50-HL0894932), the Veterans Administration (1I01BX001534), the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center and InterMune.

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Authors

Contributions

T.E.F. and D.A.S. designed the study. K.K.B., M.P.S., J.E.L., G.P.C., D.L., S.G., H.R.C., P.J.W., R.M.d.B., C.K.G., M.S.D., G.G., H.J.I., N.K., Y.Z., K.F.G., L.H.L., W.R.M., T.M.M., P.L.M., A.U.W., J.D. Crapo, B.J.M., E.A.R. and M.I.S. performed clinical, radiological and pathological phenotyping of study subjects. W.Z.B., K.K. and S.D.S. provided data and samples from the InterMune subjects. J.T., R.N.K. and C.R.M. coordinated the clinical evaluations. E.M. supervised and coordinated the laboratory work. E.M., J.D. Cogan, D.S.W., J.J.D., D.Z. and K.S. performed the laboratory work. D.M. organized the database. K.B.B. supervised the replication genotyping. M.L. supervised the genome-wide genotyping. M.F.M., M.S., A.P., D.S.K. and M.I.S. provided advice on design and relevance to pulmonary fibrosis. T.E.F., W.Z., A.L.P., B.S.P. and Y.K. analyzed the data. T.E.F., M.L. and D.A.S. developed the conceptual approaches to data analysis. T.E.F. and D.A.S. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tasha E Fingerlin or David A Schwartz.

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Competing interests

The authors have filed applications with the US Patent Office entitled 'Methods and Compositions for Risk Prediction, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Treatment of Pulmonary Disorders' (application serial number 61/298473; D.A.S. and T.E.F.) and 'Use of MUC5B Gene Expression in Therapeutics' (application serial number 61/693861; D.A.S.).

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Fingerlin, T., Murphy, E., Zhang, W. et al. Genome-wide association study identifies multiple susceptibility loci for pulmonary fibrosis. Nat Genet 45, 613–620 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2609

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