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CoPheScan: phenome-wide association studies accounting for linkage disequilibrium

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Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Sul, Jae Hoon 
Longerich, Simonne 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pPhenome-wide association studies (PheWAS) facilitate the discovery of associations between a single genetic variant with multiple phenotypes. For variants which impact a specific protein, this can help identify additional therapeutic indications or on-target side effects of intervening on that protein. However, PheWAS is restricted by an inability to distinguish confounding due to linkage disequilibrium (LD) from true pleiotropy. Here we describe CoPheScan (Coloc adapted Phenome-wide Scan), a Bayesian approach that enables an intuitive and systematic exploration of causal associations while simultaneously addressing LD confounding. We demonstrate its performance through simulation, showing considerably better control of false positive rates than a conventional approach not accounting for LD. We used CoPheScan to perform PheWAS of protein-truncating variants and fine-mapped variants from disease and pQTL studies, in 2275 disease phenotypes from the UK Biobank. Our results identify the complexity of known pleiotropic genes such as jats:italicAPOE</jats:italic>, and suggest a new causal role for jats:italicTGM3</jats:italic> in skin cancer.</jats:p>

Description

Acknowledgements: This work is funded by the Wellcome Trust (WT220788), the MRC (MC_UU_00002/4), G.S.K. and M.S.D. and supported by the NIHR Cambridge BRC (BRC-1215-20014). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust (WT220788). For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. We want to acknowledge the participants and investigators of the FinnGen and UK Biobank study, and the Neale lab for publicly sharing UK Biobank summary statistics.


Funder: GSK and MSD

Keywords

Journal Title

Nature Communications

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723

Volume Title

15

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (Wellcome) (WT220788, WT220788)
RCUK | Medical Research Council (MRC) (MC_UU_00002/4)