TY - JOUR
T1 - FUT2–ABO epistasis increases the risk of early childhood asthma and Streptococcus pneumoniae respiratory illnesses
AU - Ahluwalia, Tarunveer S
AU - Eliasen, Anders U
AU - Sevelsted, Astrid
AU - Pedersen, Casper-Emil T
AU - Stokholm, Jakob
AU - Chawes, Bo
AU - Bork-Jensen, Jette
AU - Grarup, Niels
AU - Pedersen, Oluf
AU - Hansen, Torben
AU - Linneberg, Allan
AU - Sharma, Amitabh
AU - Weiss, Scott T.
AU - Evans, Michael D.
AU - Jackson, Daniel J.
AU - Morin, Andreanne
AU - Krogfelt, Karen Angeliki
AU - Schjørring, Susanne
AU - Mortensen, Preben B.
AU - Hougaard, David M.
AU - Bybjerg-Grauholm, Jonas
AU - Bækvad-Hansen, Marie
AU - Mors, Ole
AU - Nordentoft, Merete
AU - Børglum, Anders D.
AU - Werge, Thomas
AU - Agerbo, Esben
AU - Gern, James E.
AU - Lemanske Jr., Robert F.
AU - Ober, Carole
AU - Pedersen, Anders Gorm
AU - Bisgaard, Hans
AU - Bønnelykke, Klaus
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - Asthma with severe exacerbation is the most common cause of hospitalization among young children. We aim to increase the understanding of this clinically important disease entity through a genome-wide association study. The discovery analysis comprises 2866 children experiencing severe asthma exacerbation between ages 2 and 6 years, and 65,415 non-asthmatic controls, and we replicate findings in 918 children from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) birth cohorts. We identify rs281379 near FUT2/MAMSTR on chromosome 19 as a novel risk locus (OR = 1.18 (95% CI = 1.11–1.25), Pdiscovery = 2.6 × 10−9) as well as a biologically plausible interaction between functional variants in FUT2 and ABO. We further discover and replicate a potential causal mechanism behind this interaction related to S. pneumoniae respiratory illnesses. These results suggest a novel mechanism of early childhood asthma and demonstrates the importance of phenotype-specificity for discovery of asthma genes and epistasis.
AB - Asthma with severe exacerbation is the most common cause of hospitalization among young children. We aim to increase the understanding of this clinically important disease entity through a genome-wide association study. The discovery analysis comprises 2866 children experiencing severe asthma exacerbation between ages 2 and 6 years, and 65,415 non-asthmatic controls, and we replicate findings in 918 children from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) birth cohorts. We identify rs281379 near FUT2/MAMSTR on chromosome 19 as a novel risk locus (OR = 1.18 (95% CI = 1.11–1.25), Pdiscovery = 2.6 × 10−9) as well as a biologically plausible interaction between functional variants in FUT2 and ABO. We further discover and replicate a potential causal mechanism behind this interaction related to S. pneumoniae respiratory illnesses. These results suggest a novel mechanism of early childhood asthma and demonstrates the importance of phenotype-specificity for discovery of asthma genes and epistasis.
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-020-19814-6
DO - 10.1038/s41467-020-19814-6
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 11
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 6398
ER -