An admixture mapping meta-analysis implicates genetic variation at 18q21 with asthma susceptibility in Latinos

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-7-2018

Publication Title

The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a common but complex disease with racial/ethnic differences in prevalence, morbidity, and response to therapies.

OBJECTIVE: We sought to perform an analysis of genetic ancestry to identify new loci that contribute to asthma susceptibility.

METHODS: We leveraged the mixed ancestry of 3902 Latinos and performed an admixture mapping meta-analysis for asthma susceptibility. We replicated associations in an independent study of 3774 Latinos, performed targeted sequencing for fine mapping, and tested for disease correlations with gene expression in the whole blood of more than 500 subjects from 3 racial/ethnic groups.

RESULTS: We identified a genome-wide significant admixture mapping peak at 18q21 in Latinos (P = 6.8 × 10

CONCLUSION: Ancestry at 18q21 was significantly associated with asthma in Latinos and implicated multiple ancestry-informative noncoding variants upstream of SMAD2 with asthma susceptibility. Furthermore, decreased SMAD2 expression in blood was strongly associated with increased asthma risk and increased exacerbations.

PubMed ID

30201514

ePublication

ePub ahead of print

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