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Variants in CXCR4 associate with juvenile idiopathic arthritis susceptibility

  • Terri H. Finkel
  • , Jin Li
  • , Zhi Wei
  • , Wei Wang
  • , Haitao Zhang
  • , Edward M. Behrens
  • , Emma L. Reuschel
  • , Sophie Limou
  • , Carol Wise
  • , Marilynn Punaro
  • , Mara L. Becker
  • , Jane E. Munro
  • , Berit Flatø
  • , Øystein Førre
  • , Susan D. Thompson
  • , Carl D. Langefeld
  • , David N. Glass
  • , Joseph T. Glessner
  • , Cecilia E. Kim
  • , Edward Frackelton
  • Debra K. Shivers, Kelly A. Thomas, Rosetta M. Chiavacci, Cuiping Hou, Kexiang Xu, James Snyder, Haijun Qiu, Frank Mentch, Kai Wang, Cheryl A. Winkler, Benedicte A. Lie, Justine A. Ellis, Hakon Hakonarson
  • The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • Department of Computer Science
  • Leidos Inc
  • Scottish Rite Hospital for Children
  • Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics
  • Murdoch Children's Research Institute
  • Royal Children's Hospital
  • University of Oslo
  • Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
  • Wake Forest University
  • University of Southern California
  • University of Melbourne

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is the most common chronic rheumatic disease among children, the etiology of which involves a strong genetic component, but much of the underlying genetic determinants still remain unknown. Our aim was to identify novel genetic variants that predispose to JIA. Methods: We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and replication in a total of 1166 JIA cases and 9500 unrelated controls of European ancestry. Correlation of SNP genotype and gene expression was investigated. Then we conducted targeted resequencing of a candidate locus, among a subset of 480 cases and 480 controls. SUM test was performed to evaluate the association of the identified rare functional variants. Results: The CXCR4 locus on 2q22.1 was found to be significantly associated with JIA, peaking at SNP rs953387. However, this result is subjected to subpopulation stratification within the subjects of European ancestry. After adjusting for principal components, nominal significant association remained (p < 10-4). Because of its interesting known function in immune regulation, we carried out further analyses to assess its relationship with JIA. Expression of CXCR4 was correlated with CXCR4 rs953387 genotypes in lymphoblastoid cell lines (p = 0.014) and T-cells (p = 0.0054). In addition, rare non-synonymous and stop-gain sequence variants in CXCR4, putatively damaging for CXCR4 function, were significantly enriched in JIA cases (p = 0.015). Conclusion: Our results suggest the association of CXCR4 variants with JIA, implicating that this gene may be involved in the pathogenesis of autoimmune disease. However, because this locus is subjected to population stratification within the subjects of European ancestry, additional replication is still necessary for this locus to be considered a true risk locus for JIA. This cell-surface chemokine receptor has already been targeted in other diseases and may serve as a tractable therapeutic target for a specific subset of pediatric arthritis patients with additional replication and functional validation of the locus.

Original languageEnglish
Article number24
JournalBMC Medical Genetics
Volume17
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 22 Mar 2016

Keywords

  • CXCR4
  • Genome-wide association study
  • Juvenile idiopathic arthritis
  • Targeted resequencing

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