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Stochastic search and joint fine-mapping increases accuracy and identifies previously unreported associations in immune-mediated diseases

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

Abstract: Thousands of genetic variants are associated with human disease risk, but linkage disequilibrium (LD) hinders fine-mapping the causal variants. Both lack of power, and joint tagging of two or more distinct causal variants by a single non-causal SNP, lead to inaccuracies in fine-mapping, with stochastic search more robust than stepwise. We develop a computationally efficient multinomial fine-mapping (MFM) approach that borrows information between diseases in a Bayesian framework. We show that MFM has greater accuracy than single disease analysis when shared causal variants exist, and negligible loss of precision otherwise. MFM analysis of six immune-mediated diseases reveals causal variants undetected in individual disease analysis, including in IL2RA where we confirm functional effects of multiple causal variants using allele-specific expression in sorted CD4+ T cells from genotype-selected individuals. MFM has the potential to increase fine-mapping resolution in related diseases enabling the identification of associated cellular and molecular phenotypes.

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Keywords

Article, /631/208/205/2138, /631/208/248/144, /631/114/2415, /631/250/38, /45/43, /141, article

Journal Title

Nature Communications

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723

Volume Title

10

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group UK