Ruth Chia, Sara Saez-Atienzar, Natalie Murphy, Adriano Chiò, Cornelis Blauwendraat, Ricardo H Roda, Pentti J Tienari, Henry J Kaminski, Roberta Ricciardi, Melania Guida, Anna De Rosa, Loredana Petrucci, Amelia Evoli, Carlo Provenzano, Daniel B Drachman, Bryan J Traynor
Myasthenia gravis is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by autoantibody-mediated interference of signal transmission across the neuromuscular junction. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 1,873 patients diagnosed with acetylcholine receptor antibody-positive myasthenia gravis and 36,370 healthy individuals to identify disease-associated genetic risk loci. Replication of the discovered loci was attempted in an independent cohort from the UK Biobank. We also performed a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) using expression data from skeletal muscle, whole blood, and tibial nerve to test the effects of disease-associated polymorphisms on gene expression...
February 1, 2022: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America