Home>News & Publications:Scientific Publications>A Novel MMP12 Locus Is Associated with Large Artery Atherosclerotic Stroke Using a Genome-Wide Age-at-Onset Informed Approach.

Scientific Publications

< Back to Publications

A Novel MMP12 Locus Is Associated with Large Artery Atherosclerotic Stroke Using a Genome-Wide Age-at-Onset Informed Approach.

Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsTraylor, M., Mäkelä KM, Kilarski LL, Holliday EG, Devan WJ, Nalls MA, Wiggins KL, Zhao W., Cheng YC, Achterberg S., Malik R., Sudlow C., Bevan S., Raitoharju E., METASTROKE, International Stroke Genetics Consortium Wellcome Trust Case Consortium(WTCCC2) 2, Oksala N., Thijs V., Lemmens R., Lindgren A., Slowik A., Maguire JM, Walters M., Algra A., Sharma P., Attia JR, Boncoraglio GB, Rothwell PM, de Bakker PI, Bis JC, Saleheen D., Kittner SJ, Mitchell BD, Rosand J., Meschia JF, Levi C., Dichgans M., Lehtimäki T., Lewis CM, and Markus HS
AbstractGenome-wide association studies (GWAS) have begun to identify the common genetic component to ischaemic stroke (IS). However, IS has considerable phenotypic heterogeneity. Where clinical covariates explain a large fraction of disease risk, covariate informed designs can increase power to detect associations. As prevalence rates in IS are markedly affected by age, and younger onset cases may have higher genetic predisposition, we investigated whether an age-at-onset informed approach could detect novel associations with IS and its subtypes; cardioembolic (CE), large artery atherosclerosis (LAA) and small vessel disease (SVD) in 6,778 cases of European ancestry and 12,095 ancestry-matched controls. Regression analysis to identify SNP associations was performed on posterior liabilities after conditioning on age-at-onset and affection status. We sought further evidence of an association with LAA in 1,881 cases and 50,817 controls, and examined mRNA expression levels of the nearby genes in atherosclerotic carotid artery plaques. Secondly, we performed permutation analyses to evaluate the extent to which age-at-onset informed analysis improves significance for novel loci. We identified a novel association with an MMP12 locus in LAA (rs660599; p = 2.5×10-7), with independent replication in a second population (p = 0.0048, OR(95% CI) = 1.18(1.05-1.32); meta-analysis p = 2.6×10-8). The nearby gene, MMP12, was significantly overexpressed in carotid plaques compared to atherosclerosis-free control arteries (p = 1.2×10-15; fold change = 335.6). Permutation analyses demonstrated improved significance for associations when accounting for age-at-onset in all four stroke phenotypes (p<0.001). Our results show that a covariate-informed design, by adjusting for age-at-onset of stroke, can detect variants not identified by conventional GWAS.
Year of Publication2014
JournalPLoS genetics
Volume10
Issue7
Pagese1004469
Date Published (YYYY/MM/DD)2014/07/01
ISSN Number1553-7390
DOI10.1371/journal.pgen.1004469
PubMedhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25078452?dopt=Abstract