WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2 (HealthDay News) -- Eleven genetic variants have been implicated in the risk of Parkinson's disease, including six previously identified variants and five newly discovered variants, according to research published online Feb. 2 in The Lancet.
In a meta-analysis, Michael A. Nalls, Ph.D., of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues from the International Parkinson Disease Genomics Consortium evaluated datasets from five Parkinson's disease genome-wide association studies from the United States and Europe to identify loci associated with Parkinson's disease. The researchers then completed replication analyses of significantly associated loci in an independent sample series.
The investigators identified 11 loci that surpassed the threshold for genome-wide significance, including six that were previously identified (MAPT, SNCA, HLA-DRB5, BST1, GAK, and LRRK2) and five newly identified (ACMSD, STK39, MCCC1/LAMP3, SYT11, and CCDC62/HIP1R). The combined population-attributable risk was 60.3 percent. The researchers also found that the 20 percent of patients with the highest number of risk variants at the 11 identified loci were approximately 2.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease compared with the 20 percent possessing the lowest number of genetic risk factors.
"These data provide an insight into the genetics of Parkinson's disease and the molecular cause of the disease and could provide future targets for therapies," the authors conclude.
Several authors disclosed financial relationships with pharmaceutical and/or genetics companies.
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