Genome-wide association study of multisite chronic pain in UK Biobank

by Keira J. A. Johnston, Mark J. Adams, Barbara I. Nicholl, Joey Ward, Rona J. Strawbridge, Amy Ferguson, Andrew M. McIntosh, Mark E. S. Bailey, Daniel J. Smith Chronic pain is highly prevalent worldwide and represents a significant socioeconomic and public health burden. Several aspects of chronic pain, for example back pain and a severity-related phenotype ‘chronic pain grade’, have been shown previously to be complex heritable traits with a polygen ic component. Additional pain-related phenotypes capturing aspects of an individual’s overall sensitivity to experiencing and reporting chronic pain have also been suggested as a focus for investigation. We made use of a measure of the number of sites of chronic pain in individuals within the UK g eneral population. This measure, termed Multisite Chronic Pain (MCP), is a complex trait and its genetic architecture has not previously been investigated. To address this, we carried out a large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) of MCP in ~380,000 UK Biobank participants. Our findings were consistent with MCP having a significant polygenic component, with a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) heritability of 10.2%. In total 76 independent lead SNPs at 39 risk loci were associated with MCP. Additional gene-level association analyses identified neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, nervo us system development, cell-cycle progression and apoptosis genes as enriched for genetic association with MCP. Genetic correlations were...
Source: PLoS Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Source Type: research