Epistasis Blog

From the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Lab at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (www.epistasis.org)

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Epistasis Replication

The following paper shows evidence for replication of a gene-gene interaction in Alzheimer disease. I anticipate more papers like this will be published as studies start to test for epistasis in multiple samples.

Combarros O, van Duijn CM, Hammond N, Belbin O, Arias-Vasquez A, Cortina-Borja M, Lehmann MG, Aulchenko YS, Schuur M, Kolsch H, Heun R, Wilcock GK, Brown K, Kehoe PG, Harrison R, Coto E, Alvarez V, Deloukas P, Mateo I, Gwilliam R, Morgan K, Warden DR, Smith AD, Lehmann DJ. Replication by the Epistasis Project of the interaction between the genes for IL-6 and IL-10 in the risk of Alzheimer's disease. J Neuroinflammation. 2009 Aug 23;6(1):22. [PubMed]

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Chronic inflammation is a characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD). An interaction associated with the risk of AD has been reported between polymorphisms in the regulatory regions of the genes for the pro-inflammatory cytokine, interleukin-6 (IL-6, gene: IL6), and the anti-inflammatory cytokine, interleukin-10 (IL-10, gene: IL10).

METHODS: We examined this interaction in the Epistasis Project, a collaboration of 7 AD research groups, contributing DNA samples from 1,757 cases of AD and 6,295 controls.

RESULTS: We replicated the interaction. For IL6 rs2069837 AA x IL10 rs1800871 CC, the synergy factor (SF) was 1.63 (95% confidence interval: 1.10-2.41, p = 0.01), controlling for centre, age, gender and apolipoprotein E epsilon4 (APOEepsilon4) genotype. Our results were consistent between North Europe (SF = 1.7, p = 0.03) and North Spain (SF = 2.0, p = 0.09). Further replication may require a meta-analysis. However, association due to linkage disequilibrium with other polymorphisms in the regulatory regions of these genes cannot be excluded.

CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that dysregulation of both IL-6 and IL-10 in some elderly people, due in part to genetic variations in the two genes, contributes to the development of AD. Thus, inflammation facilitates the onset of sporadic AD.

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