Genetic differences according to onset age and lung function in asthma: a cluster analysis
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The extent of differences between genetic risks associated with various asthma subtypes is still unknown. To better understand the heterogeneity of asthma, we employed an unsupervised method to identify genetic variants specifically associated with asthma subtypes. Our goal was to gain insight into the genetic basis of asthma. METHODS: In this study, we utilized the UK Biobank dataset to select asthma patients (All asthma, n = 50,517) and controls (n = 283,410). We excluded 14,431 individuals who had no information on predicted values of forced expiratory volume in one second percent (FEV1%) and onset age, resulting in a final total of 36,086 asthma cases. We conducted k-means clustering based on asthma onset age and predicted FEV1% using these samples (n = 36,086). Cluster-specific genome-wide association studies were then performed, and heritability was estimated via linkage disequilibrium score regression. To further investigate the pathophysiology, we conducted eQTL analysis with GTEx and gene-set enrichment analysis with FUMA. RESULTS: Clustering resulted in four distinct clusters: early onset asthmanormalLF (early onset with normal lung function, n = 8172), early onset asthmareducedLF (early onset with reduced lung function, n = 8925), late-onset asthmanormalLF (late-onset with normal lung function, n = 12,481), and late-onset asthmareducedLF (late-onset with reduced lung function, n = 6508). Our GWASs in four clusters and in All asthma sample identified 5 novel loci, 14 novel signals, and 51 cluster-specific signals. Among clusters, early onset asthmanormalLF and late-onset asthmareducedLF were the least correlated (rg = 0.37). Early onset asthmareducedLF showed the highest heritability explained by common variants (h2 = 0.212) and was associated with the largest number of variants (71 single nucleotide polymorphisms). Further, the pathway analysis conducted through eQTL and gene-set enrichment analysis showed that the worsening of symptoms in early onset asthma correlated with lymphocyte activation, pathogen recognition, cytokine receptor activation, and lymphocyte differentiation. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that early onset asthmareducedLF was the most genetically predisposed cluster, and that asthma clusters with reduced lung function were genetically distinct from clusters with normal lung function. Our study revealed the genetic variation between clusters that were segmented based on onset age and lung function, providing an important clue for the genetic mechanism of asthma heterogeneity.
Date Issued
2023-07
Date Acceptance
2023-06-23
Citation
Clinical and Translational Allergy, 2023, 13 (7), pp.1-14
ISSN
2045-7022
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
1
End Page
14
Journal / Book Title
Clinical and Translational Allergy
Volume
13
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Authors. Clinical and Translational Allergy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37488738
Subjects
asthma
cluster analysis
genome-wide association study
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
e12282
Date Publish Online
2023-07-14