Authors:
David C Whitcomb, Jessica LaRusch, Alyssa M Krasinskas, Lambertus Klei, Jill P Smith, Randall E Brand, John P Neoptolemos, Markus M Lerch, Matt Tector, Bimaljit S Sandhu, Nalini M Guda, Lidiya Orlichenko, Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium, Samer Alkaade, Stephen T Amann, Michelle A Anderson, John Baillie, Peter A Banks, Darwin Conwell, Gregory A Coté, Peter B Cotton, James DiSario, Lindsay A Farrer, Chris E Forsmark, Marianne Johnstone, Timothy B Gardner, Andres Gelrud, William Greenhalf, Jonathan L Haines, Douglas J Hartman, Robert A Hawes, Christopher Lawrence, Michele Lewis, Julia Mayerle, Richard Mayeux, Nadine M Melhem, Mary E Money, Thiruvengadam Muniraj, Georgios I Papachristou, Margaret A Pericak-Vance, Joseph Romagnuolo, Gerard D Schellenberg, Stuart Sherman, Peter Simon, Vijay P Singh, Adam Slivka, Donna Stolz, Robert Sutton, Frank Ulrich Weiss, C Mel Wilcox, Narcis Octavian Zarnescu, Stephen R Wisniewski, Michael R O'Connell, Michelle L Kienholz, Kathryn Roeder, M Michael Barmada, Dhiraj Yadav, & Bernie Devlin
Summary:
Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 (P < 1 × 10−12) and X-linked CLDN2 (P < 1 × 10−21) through a two-stage genome-wide study (stage 1: 676 cases and 4,507 controls; stage 2: 910 cases and 4,170 controls). The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous (or hemizygous in males) CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men (male hemizygote frequency is 0.26, whereas female homozygote frequency is 0.07).
Source:
Nature Genetics; published online 11 November 2012