Rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3, and TREM2 implicate microglial-mediated innate immunity in Alzheimer's disease

Rebecca Sims, Sven J van der Lee, Adam C Naj, Céline Bellenguez, Nandini Badarinarayan, Johanna Jakobsdottir, Brian W Kunkle, Anne Boland, Rachel Raybould, Joshua C Bis, Eden R Martin, Benjamin Grenier-Boley, Stefanie Heilmann-Heimbach, Vincent Chouraki, Amanda B Kuzma, Kristel Sleegers, Maria Vronskaya, Agustin Ruiz, Robert R Graham, Robert OlasoPer Hoffmann, Megan L Grove, Badri N Vardarajan, Mikko Hiltunen, Markus M Nöthen, Charles C White, Kara L Hamilton-Nelson, Jacques Epelbaum, Wolfgang Maier, Seung-Hoan Choi, Gary W Beecham, Cécile Dulary, Stefan Herms, Albert V Smith, Cory C Funk, Céline Derbois, Andreas J Forstner, Shahzad Ahmad, Hongdong Li, Delphine Bacq, Denise Harold, Claudia L Satizabal, Otto Valladares, Michelle K Lupton, Petra Proitsi, Angela Hodges, Yogen Patel, Ammar Al-Chalabi, Christopher E Shaw, John Powell, ARUK Consortium

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Abstract

We identified rare coding variants associated with Alzheimer's disease in a three-stage case-control study of 85,133 subjects. In stage 1, we genotyped 34,174 samples using a whole-exome microarray. In stage 2, we tested associated variants (P < 1 × 10(-4)) in 35,962 independent samples using de novo genotyping and imputed genotypes. In stage 3, we used an additional 14,997 samples to test the most significant stage 2 associations (P < 5 × 10(-8)) using imputed genotypes. We observed three new genome-wide significant nonsynonymous variants associated with Alzheimer's disease: a protective variant in PLCG2 (rs72824905: p.Pro522Arg, P = 5.38 × 10(-10), odds ratio (OR) = 0.68, minor allele frequency (MAF)cases = 0.0059, MAFcontrols = 0.0093), a risk variant in ABI3 (rs616338: p.Ser209Phe, P = 4.56 × 10(-10), OR = 1.43, MAFcases = 0.011, MAFcontrols = 0.008), and a new genome-wide significant variant in TREM2 (rs143332484: p.Arg62His, P = 1.55 × 10(-14), OR = 1.67, MAFcases = 0.0143, MAFcontrols = 0.0089), a known susceptibility gene for Alzheimer's disease. These protein-altering changes are in genes highly expressed in microglia and highlight an immune-related protein-protein interaction network enriched for previously identified risk genes in Alzheimer's disease. These genetic findings provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated innate immune response contributes directly to the development of Alzheimer's disease.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1373-1384
JournalNature Genetics
Volume49
Early online date17 Jul 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2017

Keywords

  • Journal Article

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