Influence of autozygosity on common disease risk across the phenotypic spectrum

Daniel S. Malawsky*, Eva van Walree, Benjamin M. Jacobs, Teng Hiang Heng, Qin Qin Huang, Ataf H. Sabir, Saadia Rahman, Saghira Malik Sharif, Ahsan Khan, Maša Umićević Mirkov, Hiroyuki Kuwahara, Xin Gao, Fowzan S. Alkuraya, Danielle Posthuma, William G. Newman, Christopher J. Griffiths, Rohini Mathur, David A. van Heel, Sarah Finer, Jared O'ConnellHilary C. Martin*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Autozygosity is associated with rare Mendelian disorders and clinically relevant quantitative traits. We investigated associations between the fraction of the genome in runs of homozygosity (FROH) and common diseases in Genes & Health (n = 23,978 British South Asians), UK Biobank (n = 397,184), and 23andMe. We show that restricting analysis to offspring of first cousins is an effective way of reducing confounding due to social/environmental correlates of FROH. Within this group in G&H+UK Biobank, we found experiment-wide significant associations between FROH and twelve common diseases. We replicated associations with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and post-traumatic stress disorder via within-sibling analysis in 23andMe (median n = 480,282). We estimated that autozygosity due to consanguinity accounts for 5%–18% of T2D cases among British Pakistanis. Our work highlights the possibility of widespread non-additive genetic effects on common diseases and has important implications for global populations with high rates of consanguinity.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4514-4527.e14
JournalCell
Volume186
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 12 2023

Keywords

  • autozygosity
  • common diseases
  • consanguinity
  • diverse cohorts
  • medical genetics
  • recessive

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

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