Genome-wide Association Study for Alcohol-related Cirrhosis Identifies Risk Loci in MARC1 and HNRNPUL1.

Copyright © 2020 AGA Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. BACKGROUND & AIMS: Little is known about genetic factors that affect development of alcohol-related cirrhosis. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of samples from the United Kingdom Biobank (UKB) to identify polymorphisms associated with risk of alcohol-related liver disease. METHODS: We performed a GWAS of 35,839 participants in the UKB with high intake of alcohol against markers of hepatic fibrosis (FIB-4, APRI and Forns index scores) and hepatocellular injury (levels of aminotransferases). Loci identified in the discovery analysis were tested for their association with alcohol-related cirrhosis in 3 separate European cohorts (phase 1 validation cohort; n=2545). Variants associated with alcohol-related cirrhosis in the validation at a false-discovery rate of less than 20% were then directly genotyped in 2 additional European validation cohorts (phase 2 validation, n=2068). RESULTS: In the GWAS of the discovery cohort, we identified 50 independent risk loci with genome-wide significance (