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Proteome-wide Mendelian randomization highlights AIF1 and HLA-DQA2 as targets for primary sclerosing cholangitis

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Abstract

Background

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a kind of cholestatic liver disease without effective therapies and its pathogenesis is largely unknown.

Methods

We performed the proteome-wide Mendelian randomization (MR) design to estimate the causal associations of protein levels with PSC risk. Therein, genetic associations with 4,907 plasma protein levels were extracted from a proteome-wide genome-wide association study (GWAS) with 35,559 individuals and those with PSC were obtained from the International PSC Study Group (2,871 cases and 12,019 controls) and the FinnGen study (1,491 cases and 301,383 controls). The colocalization analysis was performed to detect causal variants shared by proteins and PSC. The identified proteins were further enriched in pathways and diseases. A phenome-wide association screening was performed and potential drugs were assessed as well.

Results

The results indicated that genetically predicted plasma levels of 14 proteins were positively associated with an increased risk of PSC and 8 proteins were inversely associated with PSC risk in both PSC GWAS data sets, and they all survived in sensitivity analyses. The colocalization indicated that AIF1 (allograft inflammatory factor 1) and HLA-DQA2 (major histocompatibility complex, class II, DQ alpha 2) were shared proteins with PSC, and they should be direct targets for PSC. The phenome-wide screening suggested that variants located at AIF1 or HLA-DQA2 region were closely associated with several autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, implicating the shared pathogenesis among them.

Conclusions

Our study highly pinpointed two candidate targets (AIF1 and HLA-DQA2) for PSC.

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Availability of data and materials

The SNP–protein associations can be accessed via https://www.decode.com/summarydata/. The SNP–PSC associations can be accessed via https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/ and https://www.finngen.fi/en.

Abbreviations

PSC:

Primary sclerosing cholangitis

MR:

Mendelian randomization

GWAS:

Genome-wide association study

AIF1 :

Allograft inflammatory factor 1

HLA-DQA2 :

Major histocompatibility complex, class II, DQ alpha 2

UDCA:

Ursodeoxycholic acid

HLA:

Human leukocyte antigen

PBC:

Primary biliary cholangitis

IBD:

Inflammatory bowel disease

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

pQTL:

Protein quantitative trait locus

IV:

Instrumental variable

PC:

Principal components

SMR:

Summary-data-based Mendelian randomization

OR:

Odds ratio

HEIDI:

Heterogeneity in dependent instrument

FDR:

False discovery rate

PP:

Posterior probability

LD:

Linkage disequilibrium

IGF2R :

Insulin-like growth factor 2 receptor

TNFRSF1B :

Tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily, member 1B

ICOSLG :

Inducible T-cell co-stimulator ligand

EPHA2 :

Ephrin type-A receptor 2

MFGE8 :

Milk fat globule EGF and factor V/VIII domain containing

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all investigators contributing to the publicly available summary statistics.

Funding

The work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (82241223, U20A20360).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, General Surgery Center, First Hospital of Jilin University, No. 1 Xinmin Street, Changchun, 130021, Jilin, China

    Lanlan Chen, Yuexuan Zhao, Mingyue Li & Guoyue Lv

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Contributions

GL and LC proposed and designed the research. LC undertook data collection and performed the main data analysis. LC wrote the draft of the manuscript. YZ supervised the statistical analysis and revised the manuscript. ML visualized the results and revised the manuscript. GL supervised the whole research and claimed the integrity of data analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guoyue Lv.

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Conflict of interest

Lanlan Chen, Yuexuan Zhao, Mingyue Li, Guoyue Lv declared that no potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed in this study.

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Each study has been approved by its corresponding Ethical Review Committee.

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Chen, L., Zhao, Y., Li, M. et al. Proteome-wide Mendelian randomization highlights AIF1 and HLA-DQA2 as targets for primary sclerosing cholangitis. Hepatol Int 18, 517–528 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12072-023-10608-8

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