Genome-Wide Association Study Meta-Analysis for Parkinson Disease Motor Subtypes
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Abstract
Objective To discover genetic determinants of Parkinson disease (PD) motor subtypes, including tremor dominant (TD) and postural instability/gait difficulty (PIGD) forms.
Methods In 3,212 PD cases of European ancestry, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) examining 2 complementary outcome traits derived from the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale, including dichotomous motor subtype (TD vs PIGD) or a continuous tremor/PIGD score ratio. Logistic or linear regression models were adjusted for sex, age at onset, disease duration, and 5 ancestry principal components, followed by meta-analysis.
Results Among 71 established PD risk variants, we detected multiple suggestive associations with PD motor subtype, including GPNMB (rs199351, psubtype = 0.01, pratio = 0.03), SH3GL2 (rs10756907, psubtype = 0.02, pratio = 0.01), HIP1R (rs10847864, psubtype = 0.02), RIT2 (rs12456492, psubtype = 0.02), and FBRSL1 (rs11610045, psubtype = 0.02). A PD genetic risk score integrating all 71 PD risk variants was also associated with subtype ratio (p = 0.026, ß = −0.04, 95% confidence interval = −0.07–0). Based on top results of our GWAS, we identify a novel suggestive association at the STK32B locus (rs2301857, pratio = 6.6 × 10−7), which harbors an independent risk allele for essential tremor.
Conclusions Multiple PD risk alleles may also modify clinical manifestations to influence PD motor subtype. The discovery of a novel variant at STK32B suggests a possible overlap between genetic risk for essential tremor and tremor-dominant PD.
Glossary
- BCM=
- Baylor College of Medicine;
- ET=
- essential tremor;
- GRS=
- genetic risk score;
- GWAS=
- genome-wide association study;
- IPDGC=
- International Parkinson's Disease Genomics Consortium;
- MAF=
- minor allele frequency;
- MDS-UPDRS=
- Movement Disorder Society revised UPDRS version;
- PD=
- Parkinson disease;
- PIGD=
- postural instability/gait difficulty;
- TD=
- tremor dominant;
- UPDRS=
- Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale
Footnotes
Funding information and disclosures are provided at the end of the article. Full disclosure form information provided by the authors is available with the full text of this article at Neurology.org/NG.
↵* These authors contributed equally and are co–first authors.
International Parkinson's Disease Genomics Consortium coinvestigators are listed in the appendix 2 at the end of the article.
The Article Processing Charge was funded by Huffington Foundation.
- Received June 26, 2020.
- Accepted in final form December 14, 2020.
- Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American Academy of Neurology.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND), which permits downloading and sharing the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.
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