RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The genetic etiology of human lipid quantitative traits is not fully elucidated, and interactions between variants may play a role. We performed a gene-centric interaction study for four different lipid traits: low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), total cholesterol (TC), and triglycerides (TG). RESULTS: Our analysis consisted of a discovery phase using a merged dataset of five different cohorts (n = 12,853 to n = 16,849 depending on lipid phenotype) and a replication phase with ten independent cohorts totaling up to 36,938 additional samples. Filters are often applied before interaction testing to correct for the burden of testing all pairwise interactions. We used two different filters: 1. A filter that tested only single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with a main effect of p < 0.001 in a previous association study. 2. A filter that only tested interactions identified by Biofilter 2.0. Pairwise models that reached an interaction significance level of p < 0.001 in the discovery dataset were tested for replication. We identified thirteen SNP-SNP models that were significant in more than one replication cohort after accounting for multiple testing. CONCLUSIONS: These results may reveal novel insights into the genetic etiology of lipid levels. Furthermore, we developed a pipeline to perform a computationally efficient interaction analysis with multi-cohort replication.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The protein tyrosine phosphatase nonreceptor type 1 (PTPN1) gene encodes for the protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B, which suppresses the signaling pathway of insulin. Variations in PTPN1 may lead to changes in insulin sensitivity and consequent changes in protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B activity may also contribute to the development of metabolic endophenotypes. Our aim was to investigate the association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the PTPN1 gene and metabolic endophenotypes and insulin sensitivity. DESIGN AND METHODS: We used data from a population-based cross-sectional study of 382 Dutch Caucasian men aged between 40-80 years, in whom we genotyped and analyzed four tag SNPs in PTPN1. RESULTS: We show that the minor alleles of three tag SNPs of the PTPN1 gene (rs6067484, rs6020611, rs1060402) are associated with higher levels of total plasma cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in men with a body mass index (BMI) below 26 kg/m2 (P<0.05). We also show that men with a BMI below 26 kg/m2 and carrying the rs3487348 T allele tend to have a more beneficial profile for total plasma cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (P<0.05). Haplotypes that comprised these alleles were also borderline statistically significant associated with higher levels of LDL and total cholesterol in men with BMI below 26 kg/m2. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that SNPs in the PTPN1 gene are associated with total plasma and LDL cholesterol levels.
