Widespread recessive effects on common diseases in a cohort of 44,000 British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis with high autozygosity.
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Abstract | Genetic association studies have focused on testing additive models in cohorts with European ancestry. Little is known about recessive effects on common diseases, specifically for non-European ancestry. Genes & Health is a cohort of British Pakistani and Bangladeshi individuals with elevated rates of consanguinity and endogamy, making it suitable to study recessive effects. We imputed variants into a genotyped dataset (n = 44,190) by using two reference panels: a set of 4,982 whole-exome sequences from within the cohort and the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed-r2) panel. We performed association testing with 898 diseases from electronic health records. 185 independent loci reached genome-wide significance (p < 5 × 10) under the recessive model, with p values lower than under the additive model, and >40% of these were novel. 140 loci demonstrated nominally significant (p < 0.05) dominance deviation p values, confirming a recessive association pattern. Sixteen loci in three clusters were significant at a Bonferroni threshold, accounting for multiple phenotypes tested (p < 5.4 × 10). In FinnGen, we replicated 44% of the expected number of Bonferroni-significant loci we were powered to replicate, at least one from each cluster, including an intronic variant in patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 (PNPLA3; rs66812091) and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a previously reported additive association. We present evidence suggesting that the association is recessive instead (odds ratio [OR] = 1.3, recessive p = 2 × 10, additive p = 2 × 10, dominance deviation p = 3 × 10, and FinnGen recessive OR = 1.3 and p = 6 × 10). We identified a novel protective recessive association between a missense variant in SGLT4 (rs61746559), a sodium-glucose transporter with a possible role in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, and hypertension (OR = 0.2, p = 3 × 10, dominance deviation p = 7 × 10). These results motivate interrogating recessive effects on common diseases more widely. |
Year of Publication | 2025
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Journal | American journal of human genetics
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Date Published | 04/2025
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ISSN | 1537-6605
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DOI | 10.1016/j.ajhg.2025.03.020
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PubMed ID | 40306283
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