Project description:Strong associations between HLA alleles and infectious and autoimmune diseases are well established. Although obesity is also associated with these diseases, the relationship between HLA and obesity has not been systematically investigated in a large cohort. In the current study, we analyzed the association of HLA alleles with BMI using data from 1.3 million healthy adult donors from the Chinese Marrow Donor Program (CMDP). We found 23 HLA alleles, including 12 low-resolution and 11 high-resolution alleles, were significantly associated with BMI after correction for multiple testing. Alleles associated with high BMI were enriched in haplotypes that were common in both Chinese and European populations, whereas the alleles associated with low BMI were enriched in haplotypes common only in Asians. Alleles B*07, DRB1*07, DRB1*12, and C*03:02 provided the strongest associations with BMI (P = 6.89 × 10-10, 1.32 × 10-9, 1.52 × 10-9, and 4.45 × 10-8, respectively), where B*07 and DRB1*07 also had evidence for sex-specific effects (Pheterogeneity = 0.0067 and 0.00058, respectively). These results, which identify associations between alleles of HLA-B, DRB1, and C with BMI in Chinese young adults, implicate a novel biological connection between HLA alleles and obesity.
Project description:We have identified an underrecognized severe adverse drug reaction (ADR) of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) associated respiratory failure in previously healthy children and young adults. We investigated potential genetic risk factors associated with TMP-SMX induced respiratory failure in a cohort of seven patients. We explored whole genome sequence among seven patients representing nearly half of all reported cases worldwide and 63 unrelated control individuals in two stages: (1) human leukocyte antigen (HLA) locus variation as several other ADRs have been associated HLA genetic variants and (2) coding variation to catalog and explore potential rare variants contributing to this devastating reaction. All cases were either heterozygous (carriers) or homozygous for the common HLA-B*07:02-HLA-C*07:02 haplotype. Despite the small sample size, this observation is statistically significant both in conservative comparison to maximum reported population frequencies (binomial P = 0.00017 for HLA-B and P = 0.00028 for HLA-C) and to our control population assessed by same HLA genotyping approach (binomial P = 0.000001 for HLA-B and P = 0.000018 for HLA-C). No gene elsewhere in the genome harnessed shared rare case enriched coding variation. Our results suggests that HLA-B*07:02 and HLA-C*07:02 are necessary for a patient to develop respiratory failure due to TMP-SMX.