2012 Articles

Large-Scale Gene-Centric Meta-analysis across 32 Studies Identifies Multiple Lipid Loci

Asselbergs, Folkert W.; Guo, Yiran; van Iperen, Erik P. A.; Sivapalaratnam, Suthesh; Tragante, Vinicius; Lanktree, Matthew B.; Lange, Leslie A.; Almoguera, Berta; Appelman, Yolande E.; Barnard, John; Baumert, Jens; Beitelshees, Amber L.; Bhangale, Tushar R.; Chen, Yii-Der Ida; Gaunt, Tom R.; Gong, Yan; Hopewell, Jemma C.; Johnson, Toby; Kleber, Marcus E.; Langaee, Taimour Y.; Li, Mingyao; Li, Yun R.; Liu, Kiang; McDonough, Caitrin W.; Meijs, Matthijs F. L.; Middelberg, Rita P. S.; Musunuru, Kiran; Nelson, Christopher P.; O’Connell, Jeffrey R.; Padmanabhan, Sandosh; Pankow, James S.; Pankratz, Nathan; Rafelt, Suzanne; Rajagopalan, Ramakrishnan; Romaine, Simon P. R.; Schork, Nicholas J.; Shaffer, Jonathan; Shen, Haiqing; Smith, Erin N.; Tischfield, Sam E.; van der Most, Peter J.; van Vliet-Ostaptchouk, Jana V.; Verweij, Niek; Volcik, Kelly A.; Zhang, Li; Bailey, Kent R.; Bailey, Kristian M.; Bauer, Florianne; Boer, Jolanda M. A.; Braund, Peter S.; Burt, Amber; Burton, Paul R.; Buxbaum, Sarah G.; Chen, Wei; Cooper-DeHoff, Rhonda M.; Cupples, L. Adrienne; deJong, Jonas S.; Delles, Christian; Duggan, David; Fornage, Myriam; Furlong, Clement E.; Glazer, Nicole; Gums, John G.; Hastie, Claire; Holmes, Michael V.; Illig, Thomas; Kirkland, Susan A.; Kivimaki, Mika; Klein, Ronald; Klein, Barbara E.; Kooperberg, Charles; Kottke-Marchant, Kandice; Kumari, Meena; LaCroix, Andrea Z.; Mallela, Laya; Murugesan, Gurunathan; Ordovas, Jose; Ouwehand, Willem H.; Post, Wendy S.; Saxena, Richa; Scharnagl, Hubert; Schreiner, Pamela J.; Shah, Tina; Shields, Denis C.; Shimbo, Daichi; Srinivasan, Sathanur R.; Stolk, Ronald P.; Swerdlow, Daniel I.; Taylor Jr., Herman A.; Topol, Eric J.; Toskala, Elina; van Pelt, Joost L.; van Setten, Jessica; Yusuf, Salim; Whittaker, John C.; Zwinderman, A. H.; Anand, Sonia S.; Balmforth, Anthony J.; Berenson, Gerald S.; Bezzina, Connie R.; Boehm, Bernhard O.; Boerwinkle, Eric; Casas, Juan P.; Caulfield, Mark J.; Clarke, Robert; Connell, John M.; Cruickshanks, Karen J.; Davidson, Karina W.; Day, Ian N. M.; de Bakker, Paul I. W.; Doevendans, Pieter A.; Dominiczak, Anna F.; Hall, Alistair S.; Hartman, Catharina A.; Hengstenberg, Christian; Hillege, Hans L.; Hofker, Marten H.; Humphries, Steve E.; Jarvik, Gail P.; Johnson, Julie A.; Kaess, Bernhard M.; Kathiresan, Sekar; Koenig, Wolfgang; Lawlor, Debbie A.; Marz, Winfried; Melander, Olle; Mitchell, Braxton D.; Montgomery, Grant W.; Munroe, Patricia B.; Murray, Sarah S.; Newhouse, Stephen J.; Onland-Moret, N. Charlotte; Poulter, Neil; Psaty, Bruce; Redline, Susan; Rich, Stephen S.; Rotter, Jerome I.; Schunkert, Heribert; Sever, Peter; Shuldiner, Alan R.; Silverstein, Roy L.; Stanton, Alice; Thorand, Barbara; Trip, Mieke D.; Tsai, Michael Y.; van der Harst, Pim; van der Schoot, Ellen; van der Schouw, Yvonne T.; Verschuren, W. M. Monique; Watkins, Hugh; Wilde, Arthur A. M.; Wolffenbuttel, Bruce H. R.; Whitfield, John B.; Hovingh, G. Kees; Ballantyne, Christie M.; Wijmenga, Cisca; Reilly, Muredach P.; Martin, Nicholas G.; LifeLines Cohort Study

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified many SNPs underlying variations in plasma-lipid levels. We explore whether additional loci associated with plasma-lipid phenotypes, such as high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol (TC), and triglycerides (TGs), can be identified by a dense gene-centric approach. Our meta-analysis of 32 studies in 66,240 individuals of European ancestry was based on the custom ∼50,000 SNP genotyping array (the ITMAT-Broad-CARe array) covering ∼2,000 candidate genes. SNP-lipid associations were replicated either in a cohort comprising an additional 24,736 samples or within the Global Lipid Genetic Consortium. We identified four, six, ten, and four unreported SNPs in established lipid genes for HDL-C, LDL-C, TC, and TGs, respectively. We also identified several lipid-related SNPs in previously unreported genes: DGAT2, HCAR2, GPIHBP1, PPARG, and FTO for HDL-C; SOCS3, APOH, SPTY2D1, BRCA2, and VLDLR for LDL-C; SOCS3, UGT1A1, BRCA2, UBE3B, FCGR2A, CHUK, and INSIG2 for TC; and SERPINF2, C4B, GCK, GATA4, INSR, and LPAL2 for TGs. The proportion of explained phenotypic variance in the subset of studies providing individual-level data was 9.9% for HDL-C, 9.5% for LDL-C, 10.3% for TC, and 8.0% for TGs. This large meta-analysis of lipid phenotypes with the use of a dense gene-centric approach identified multiple SNPs not previously described in established lipid genes and several previously unknown loci. The explained phenotypic variance from this approach was comparable to that from a meta-analysis of GWAS data, suggesting that a focused genotyping approach can further increase the understanding of heritability of plasma lipids.