Age-of-onset information helps identify 76 genetic variants associated with allergic disease

• Published in: PLoS genetics 2020-06, Vol.16 (6), p.e1008725-e1008725
• Main Authors: Ferreira, Manuel A R, Vonk, Judith M, Baurecht, Hansjörg, Marenholz, Ingo, Tian, Chao, Hoffman, Joshua D, Helmer, Quinta, Tillander, Annika, Ullemar, Vilhelmina, Lu, Yi, Grosche, Sarah, Rüschendorf, Franz, Granell, Raquel, Brumpton, Ben M, Fritsche, Lars G, Bhatta, Laxmi, Gabrielsen, Maiken E, Nielsen, Jonas B, Zhou, Wei, Hveem, Kristian, Langhammer, Arnulf, Holmen, Oddgeir L, Løset, Mari, Abecasis, Gonçalo R, Willer, Cristen J, Emami, Nima C, Cavazos, Taylor B, Witte, John S, Szwajda, Agnieszka, Hinds, David A, Hübner, Norbert, Weidinger, Stephan, Magnusson, Patrik Ke, Jorgenson, Eric, Karlsson, Robert, Paternoster, Lavinia, Boomsma, Dorret I, Almqvist, Catarina, Lee, Young-Ae, Koppelman, Gerard H
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Age; Age of Onset; Aged; Allergic diseases; Allergy; Asthma; Asthma - genetics; Asthma - pathology; Biology and Life Sciences; Bone morphogenetic protein receptor type II; Child; Dermatology; Disease age factors; Eczema; Eczema - genetics; Eczema - pathology; Epidemiology; Female; Food allergies; Genetic aspects; Genetic diversity; Genetic Loci; Genetic variation; Genetics; Genome-wide association studies; Genome-Wide Association Study - methods; Genomes; Hay fever; Health care; Health informatics; Health sciences; Hospitals; Humans; Hypersensitivity; Identification and classification; Internal medicine; Male; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Medicine and Health Sciences; Middle Aged; NOD2 protein; Nursing; Pediatrics; Phenotypes; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Preventive medicine; Public health; Quantitative trait loci; Rhinitis, Allergic, Seasonal - genetics; Rhinitis, Allergic, Seasonal - pathology; Risk factors; Smad4 protein
• ISSN: 1553-7404; 1553-7390; 1553-7404
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008725

Risk factors that contribute to inter-individual differences in the age-of-onset of allergic diseases are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to identify genetic risk variants associated with the age at which symptoms of allergic disease first develop, considering information from asthma, hay fever and eczema. Self-reported age-of-onset information was available for 117,130 genotyped individuals of European ancestry from the UK Biobank study. For each individual, we identified the earliest age at which asthma, hay fever and/or eczema was first diagnosed and performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of this combined age-of-onset phenotype. We identified 50 variants with a significant independent association (P