Age-Associated Disease GWAS Meta-Analysis

Created on Sept. 21, 2012, 4:38 p.m. by Hevok & updated by Hevok on May 2, 2013, 4:55 p.m.

A small number of places in the human genome are associated with a large number of diseases and in particular diseases of aging.

A meta-analysis of hundreds of Genome-Wide-Association Studies (GWAS) identified 1775 susceptibility SNPs to 105 unique age-associated diseases. In order to test whether diseases associations mapped to randomly through the genome or clustered in hotspots these were mapped onto genomic bins. More than 90% of the genome lacked any disease loci, but lots of diseases mapped to two specific loci. From this several peaks mapped to multiple diseases and mapped to Major Histocompatiblity (MHC) locus on 6p21 and INK4/ARF (CDKN2a/b) tumor suppressor locus on 9p21.3. All 10 significantly enriched bins contained genes linked to either inflammation or cellular senescence. SNPs near regulators of senescence were particularly associated with diseases of aging Review: a meta-analysis of GWAS and age-associated diseases'>http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-9726.2012.00871.x/abstract">Review: a meta-analysis of GWAS and age-associated diseases] [http://www.biocompare.com/Life-Science-News/121459-Diseases-Of-Aging-Map-To-A-Few-Hotspots-On-The-Human-Genome/].


Tags: aging, genomics
Parent: News

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