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Eissman JM, Dumitrescu L, Mahoney ER, Smith AN, Mukherjee S, Lee ML, Scollard P, Choi SE, Bush WS, Engelman CD, Lu Q, Fardo DW, Trittschuh EH, Mez J, Kaczorowski CC, Hernandez Saucedo H, Widaman KF, Buckley RF, Properzi MJ, Mormino EC, Yang HS, Harrison TM, Hedden T, Nho K, Andrews SJ, Tommet D, Hadad N, Sanders RE, Ruderfer DM, Gifford KA, Zhong X, Raghavan NS, Vardarajan BN, Pericak-Vance MA, Farrer LA, Wang LS, Cruchaga C, Schellenberg GD, Cox NJ, Haines JL, Keene CD, Saykin AJ, Larson EB, Sperling RA, Mayeux R, Cuccaro ML, Bennett DA, Schneider JA, Crane PK, Jefferson AL, Hohman TJ. Sex differences in the genetic architecture of cognitive resilience to Alzheimer's disease. Brain 2022; 145:2541-2554. [PMID: 35552371 PMCID: PMC9337804 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awac177] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2021] [Revised: 04/07/2022] [Accepted: 04/14/2022] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
Approximately 30% of elderly adults are cognitively unimpaired at time of death despite the presence of Alzheimer's disease neuropathology at autopsy. Studying individuals who are resilient to the cognitive consequences of Alzheimer's disease neuropathology may uncover novel therapeutic targets to treat Alzheimer's disease. It is well established that there are sex differences in response to Alzheimer's disease pathology, and growing evidence suggests that genetic factors may contribute to these differences. Taken together, we sought to elucidate sex-specific genetic drivers of resilience. We extended our recent large scale genomic analysis of resilience in which we harmonized cognitive data across four cohorts of cognitive ageing, in vivo amyloid PET across two cohorts, and autopsy measures of amyloid neuritic plaque burden across two cohorts. These data were leveraged to build robust, continuous resilience phenotypes. With these phenotypes, we performed sex-stratified [n (males) = 2093, n (females) = 2931] and sex-interaction [n (both sexes) = 5024] genome-wide association studies (GWAS), gene and pathway-based tests, and genetic correlation analyses to clarify the variants, genes and molecular pathways that relate to resilience in a sex-specific manner. Estimated among cognitively normal individuals of both sexes, resilience was 20-25% heritable, and when estimated in either sex among cognitively normal individuals, resilience was 15-44% heritable. In our GWAS, we identified a female-specific locus on chromosome 10 [rs827389, β (females) = 0.08, P (females) = 5.76 × 10-09, β (males) = -0.01, P(males) = 0.70, β (interaction) = 0.09, P (interaction) = 1.01 × 10-04] in which the minor allele was associated with higher resilience scores among females. This locus is located within chromatin loops that interact with promoters of genes involved in RNA processing, including GATA3. Finally, our genetic correlation analyses revealed shared genetic architecture between resilience phenotypes and other complex traits, including a female-specific association with frontotemporal dementia and male-specific associations with heart rate variability traits. We also observed opposing associations between sexes for multiple sclerosis, such that more resilient females had a lower genetic susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, and more resilient males had a higher genetic susceptibility to multiple sclerosis. Overall, we identified sex differences in the genetic architecture of resilience, identified a female-specific resilience locus and highlighted numerous sex-specific molecular pathways that may underly resilience to Alzheimer's disease pathology. This study illustrates the need to conduct sex-aware genomic analyses to identify novel targets that are unidentified in sex-agnostic models. Our findings support the theory that the most successful treatment for an individual with Alzheimer's disease may be personalized based on their biological sex and genetic context.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jaclyn M Eissman
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Logan Dumitrescu
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Emily R Mahoney
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Alexandra N Smith
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | | | - Michael L Lee
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Phoebe Scollard
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Seo Eun Choi
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, USA
| | - William S Bush
- Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, Department of Population and
Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, OH, USA
| | - Corinne D Engelman
- Department of Population Health Sciences, School of Medicine and Public
Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison,
WI, USA
| | - Qiongshi Lu
- Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Madison, WI, USA
- Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - David W Fardo
- Department of Biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of
Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
- Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky,
Lexington, KY, USA
| | - Emily H Trittschuh
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington
School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA
- VA Puget Sound Health Care System, GRECC, Seattle,
WA, USA
| | - Jesse Mez
- Department of Neurology, Boston University School of
Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
| | | | - Hector Hernandez Saucedo
- UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology,
University of California Davis Medical Center, Sacramento,
CA, USA
| | | | - Rachel F Buckley
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical
School, Boston, MA, USA
- Center for Alzheimer's Research and Treatment, Department of Neurology,
Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston,
MA, USA
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of
Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
| | - Michael J Properzi
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical
School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Elizabeth C Mormino
- Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Hyun Sik Yang
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical
School, Boston, MA, USA
- Center for Alzheimer's Research and Treatment, Department of Neurology,
Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston,
MA, USA
| | - Theresa M Harrison
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California
Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Trey Hedden
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York
City, NY, USA
| | - Kwangsik Nho
- Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana Alzheimer Disease
Center, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis,
IN, USA
- Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Indiana University
School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
| | - Shea J Andrews
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York
City, NY, USA
| | - Douglas Tommet
- Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University School of
Medicine, Providence, RI, USA
| | | | | | - Douglas M Ruderfer
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Katherine A Gifford
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Xiaoyuan Zhong
- Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Madison, WI, USA
- Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Neha S Raghavan
- Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New
York, NY, USA
- The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and The Aging Brain,
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Institute for Genomic Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and
The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY,
USA
| | - Badri N Vardarajan
- Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New
York, NY, USA
- The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and The Aging Brain,
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Institute for Genomic Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and
The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY,
USA
| | | | | | | | - Margaret A Pericak-Vance
- John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics, University of Miami School of
Medicine, Miami, FL, USA
| | - Lindsay A Farrer
- Department of Neurology, Boston University School of
Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public
Health, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Medicine (Biomedical Genetics), Boston University School of
Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Li San Wang
- Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center, Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of
Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Carlos Cruchaga
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of
Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Gerard D Schellenberg
- Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center, Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of
Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Nancy J Cox
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Jonathan L Haines
- Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, Department of Population and
Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, OH, USA
| | - C Dirk Keene
- Department of Pathology, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Andrew J Saykin
- Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University School of
Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
| | - Eric B Larson
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, USA
- Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute,
Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Reisa A Sperling
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical
School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Richard Mayeux
- Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New
York, NY, USA
- The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and The Aging Brain,
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Institute for Genomic Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and
The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY,
USA
| | - Michael L Cuccaro
- John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics, University of Miami School of
Medicine, Miami, FL, USA
| | - David A Bennett
- Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center, Rush University Medical
Center, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Julie A Schneider
- Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center, Rush University Medical
Center, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Paul K Crane
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Angela L Jefferson
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Timothy J Hohman
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical
Center, Nashville, TN, USA
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Iohan LDCC, Lambert JC, Costa MR. Analysis of modular gene co-expression networks reveals molecular pathways underlying Alzheimer’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0266405. [PMID: 35421130 PMCID: PMC9009680 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266405] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2021] [Accepted: 03/18/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
A comprehensive understanding of the pathological mechanisms involved at different stages of neurodegenerative diseases is key for the advance of preventive and disease-modifying treatments. Gene expression alterations in the diseased brain is a potential source of information about biological processes affected by pathology. In this work, we performed a systematic comparison of gene expression alterations in the brains of human patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) and animal models of amyloidopathy and tauopathy. Using a systems biology approach to uncover biological processes associated with gene expression alterations, we could pinpoint processes more strongly associated with tauopathy/PSP and amyloidopathy/AD. We show that gene expression alterations related to immune-inflammatory responses preponderate in younger, whereas those associated to synaptic transmission are mainly observed in older AD patients. In PSP, however, changes associated with immune-inflammatory responses and synaptic transmission overlap. These two different patterns observed in AD and PSP brains are fairly recapitulated in animal models of amyloidopathy and tauopathy, respectively. Moreover, in AD, but not PSP or animal models, gene expression alterations related to RNA splicing are highly prevalent, whereas those associated with myelination are enriched both in AD and PSP, but not in animal models. Finally, we identify 12 AD and 4 PSP genetic risk factors in cell-type specific co-expression modules, thus contributing to unveil the possible role of these genes to pathogenesis. Altogether, this work contributes to unravel the potential biological processes affected by amyloid versus tau pathology and how they could contribute to the pathogenesis of AD and PSP.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lukas da Cruz Carvalho Iohan
- Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil
- Bioinformatics Multidisciplinary Environment, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil
| | - Jean-Charles Lambert
- Univ. Lille, Inserm, CHU Lille, Institut Pasteur de Lille, U1167-RID-AGE Facteurs de Risque et Déterminants Moléculaires des Maladies Liées au Vieillissement, DISTALZ, Lille, France
| | - Marcos R. Costa
- Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil
- Univ. Lille, Inserm, CHU Lille, Institut Pasteur de Lille, U1167-RID-AGE Facteurs de Risque et Déterminants Moléculaires des Maladies Liées au Vieillissement, DISTALZ, Lille, France
- * E-mail:
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3
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Dumitrescu L, Mahoney ER, Mukherjee S, Lee ML, Bush WS, Engelman CD, Lu Q, Fardo DW, Trittschuh EH, Mez J, Kaczorowski C, Hernandez Saucedo H, Widaman KF, Buckley R, Properzi M, Mormino E, Yang HS, Harrison T, Hedden T, Nho K, Andrews SJ, Tommet D, Hadad N, Sanders RE, Ruderfer DM, Gifford KA, Moore AM, Cambronero F, Zhong X, Raghavan NS, Vardarajan B, Pericak-Vance MA, Farrer LA, Wang LS, Cruchaga C, Schellenberg G, Cox NJ, Haines JL, Keene CD, Saykin AJ, Larson EB, Sperling RA, Mayeux R, Bennett DA, Schneider JA, Crane PK, Jefferson AL, Hohman TJ. Genetic variants and functional pathways associated with resilience to Alzheimer's disease. Brain 2020; 143:2561-2575. [PMID: 32844198 PMCID: PMC7447518 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awaa209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 85] [Impact Index Per Article: 21.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2020] [Revised: 04/22/2020] [Accepted: 05/08/2020] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Approximately 30% of older adults exhibit the neuropathological features of Alzheimer's disease without signs of cognitive impairment. Yet, little is known about the genetic factors that allow these potentially resilient individuals to remain cognitively unimpaired in the face of substantial neuropathology. We performed a large, genome-wide association study (GWAS) of two previously validated metrics of cognitive resilience quantified using a latent variable modelling approach and representing better-than-predicted cognitive performance for a given level of neuropathology. Data were harmonized across 5108 participants from a clinical trial of Alzheimer's disease and three longitudinal cohort studies of cognitive ageing. All analyses were run across all participants and repeated restricting the sample to individuals with unimpaired cognition to identify variants at the earliest stages of disease. As expected, all resilience metrics were genetically correlated with cognitive performance and education attainment traits (P-values < 2.5 × 10-20), and we observed novel correlations with neuropsychiatric conditions (P-values < 7.9 × 10-4). Notably, neither resilience metric was genetically correlated with clinical Alzheimer's disease (P-values > 0.42) nor associated with APOE (P-values > 0.13). In single variant analyses, we observed a genome-wide significant locus among participants with unimpaired cognition on chromosome 18 upstream of ATP8B1 (index single nucleotide polymorphism rs2571244, minor allele frequency = 0.08, P = 2.3 × 10-8). The top variant at this locus (rs2571244) was significantly associated with methylation in prefrontal cortex tissue at multiple CpG sites, including one just upstream of ATPB81 (cg19596477; P = 2 × 10-13). Overall, this comprehensive genetic analysis of resilience implicates a putative role of vascular risk, metabolism, and mental health in protection from the cognitive consequences of neuropathology, while also providing evidence for a novel resilience gene along the bile acid metabolism pathway. Furthermore, the genetic architecture of resilience appears to be distinct from that of clinical Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that a shift in focus to molecular contributors to resilience may identify novel pathways for therapeutic targets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Logan Dumitrescu
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Emily R Mahoney
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | | | - Michael L Lee
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - William S Bush
- Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
| | - Corinne D Engelman
- Department of Population Health Sciences, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Qiongshi Lu
- Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
- Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - David W Fardo
- Department of Biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
- Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
| | - Emily H Trittschuh
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA
- VA Puget Sound Health Care System, GRECC, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Jesse Mez
- Deparment of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
| | | | - Hector Hernandez Saucedo
- UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, University of California Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA, USA
| | | | - Rachel Buckley
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
| | - Michael Properzi
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Elizabeth Mormino
- Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Hyun-Sik Yang
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Tessa Harrison
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Trey Hedden
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, NY, USA
| | - Kwangsik Nho
- Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
- Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
| | - Shea J Andrews
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, NY, USA
| | - Doug Tommet
- Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University School of Medicine, Providence, RI, USA
| | | | | | - Douglas M Ruderfer
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Katherine A Gifford
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Annah M Moore
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Francis Cambronero
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Xiaoyuan Zhong
- Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
- Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Neha S Raghavan
- Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and The Aging Brain, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Institute for Genomic Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA
| | - Badri Vardarajan
- Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and The Aging Brain, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Institute for Genomic Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA
| | | | | | - Margaret A Pericak-Vance
- John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA
| | - Lindsay A Farrer
- Deparment of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Medicine (Biomedical Genetics), Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Li-San Wang
- Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Carlos Cruchaga
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Gerard Schellenberg
- Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Nancy J Cox
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Jonathan L Haines
- Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
| | - C Dirk Keene
- Department of Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Andrew J Saykin
- Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
| | - Eric B Larson
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Reisa A Sperling
- Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Richard Mayeux
- Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and The Aging Brain, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- The Institute for Genomic Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA
| | - David A Bennett
- Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Julie A Schneider
- Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Paul K Crane
- Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Angela L Jefferson
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Timothy J Hohman
- Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
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4
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Broce I, Karch CM, Wen N, Fan CC, Wang Y, Hong Tan C, Kouri N, Ross OA, Höglinger GU, Muller U, Hardy J, Momeni P, Hess CP, Dillon WP, Miller ZA, Bonham LW, Rabinovici GD, Rosen HJ, Schellenberg GD, Franke A, Karlsen TH, Veldink JH, Ferrari R, Yokoyama JS, Miller BL, Andreassen OA, Dale AM, Desikan RS, Sugrue LP. Immune-related genetic enrichment in frontotemporal dementia: An analysis of genome-wide association studies. PLoS Med 2018; 15:e1002487. [PMID: 29315334 PMCID: PMC5760014 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002487] [Citation(s) in RCA: 87] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2017] [Accepted: 12/05/2017] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Converging evidence suggests that immune-mediated dysfunction plays an important role in the pathogenesis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Although genetic studies have shown that immune-associated loci are associated with increased FTD risk, a systematic investigation of genetic overlap between immune-mediated diseases and the spectrum of FTD-related disorders has not been performed. METHODS AND FINDINGS Using large genome-wide association studies (GWASs) (total n = 192,886 cases and controls) and recently developed tools to quantify genetic overlap/pleiotropy, we systematically identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) jointly associated with FTD-related disorders-namely, FTD, corticobasal degeneration (CBD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)-and 1 or more immune-mediated diseases including Crohn disease, ulcerative colitis (UC), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), type 1 diabetes (T1D), celiac disease (CeD), and psoriasis. We found up to 270-fold genetic enrichment between FTD and RA, up to 160-fold genetic enrichment between FTD and UC, up to 180-fold genetic enrichment between FTD and T1D, and up to 175-fold genetic enrichment between FTD and CeD. In contrast, for CBD and PSP, only 1 of the 6 immune-mediated diseases produced genetic enrichment comparable to that seen for FTD, with up to 150-fold genetic enrichment between CBD and CeD and up to 180-fold enrichment between PSP and RA. Further, we found minimal enrichment between ALS and the immune-mediated diseases tested, with the highest levels of enrichment between ALS and RA (up to 20-fold). For FTD, at a conjunction false discovery rate < 0.05 and after excluding SNPs in linkage disequilibrium, we found that 8 of the 15 identified loci mapped to the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region on Chromosome (Chr) 6. We also found novel candidate FTD susceptibility loci within LRRK2 (leucine rich repeat kinase 2), TBKBP1 (TBK1 binding protein 1), and PGBD5 (piggyBac transposable element derived 5). Functionally, we found that the expression of FTD-immune pleiotropic genes (particularly within the HLA region) is altered in postmortem brain tissue from patients with FTD and is enriched in microglia/macrophages compared to other central nervous system cell types. The main study limitation is that the results represent only clinically diagnosed individuals. Also, given the complex interconnectedness of the HLA region, we were not able to define the specific gene or genes on Chr 6 responsible for our pleiotropic signal. CONCLUSIONS We show immune-mediated genetic enrichment specifically in FTD, particularly within the HLA region. Our genetic results suggest that for a subset of patients, immune dysfunction may contribute to FTD risk. These findings have potential implications for clinical trials targeting immune dysfunction in patients with FTD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Iris Broce
- Neuroradiology Section, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Celeste M. Karch
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
| | - Natalie Wen
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
| | - Chun C. Fan
- Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Yunpeng Wang
- Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research (NORMENT), Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
| | - Chin Hong Tan
- Neuroradiology Section, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Naomi Kouri
- Department of Neuroscience, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America
| | - Owen A. Ross
- Department of Neuroscience, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America
| | - Günter U. Höglinger
- Department of Neurology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
- German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Munich, Germany
- Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy), Munich, Germany
| | - Ulrich Muller
- Institut for Humangenetik, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen, Germany
| | - John Hardy
- Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | | | - Parastoo Momeni
- Laboratory of Neurogenetics, Department of Internal Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, Texas, United States of America
| | - Christopher P. Hess
- Neuroradiology Section, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - William P. Dillon
- Neuroradiology Section, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Zachary A. Miller
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Luke W. Bonham
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Gil D. Rabinovici
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Howard J. Rosen
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Gerard D. Schellenberg
- Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| | - Andre Franke
- Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany
| | - Tom H. Karlsen
- Norwegian PSC Research Center, Research Institute of Internal Medicine, Division of Cancer Medicine, Surgery and Transplantation, Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway
- Division of Gastroenterology, Institute of Medicine, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
- K.G. Jebsen Inflammation Research Centre, Research Institute of Internal Medicine, Division of Cancer Medicine, Surgery and Transplantation, Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway
| | - Jan H. Veldink
- Department of Neurology, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Raffaele Ferrari
- Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Jennifer S. Yokoyama
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Bruce L. Miller
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Ole A. Andreassen
- Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research (NORMENT), Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
| | - Anders M. Dale
- Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
- Department of Radiology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
- Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Rahul S. Desikan
- Neuroradiology Section, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
- Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
| | - Leo P. Sugrue
- Neuroradiology Section, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
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