title: Potential etiologic and functional implications of genome-wide association loci for human diseases and traits.
abstract: We have developed an online catalog of SNP-trait associations from published genome-wide association studies for use in investigating genomic characteristics of trait/disease-associated SNPs (TASs). Reported TASs were common [median risk allele frequency 36%, interquartile range (IQR) 21%-53%] and were associated with modest effect sizes [median odds ratio (OR) 1.33, IQR 1.20-1.61]. Among 20 genomic annotation sets, reported TASs were significantly overrepresented only in nonsynonymous sites [OR = 3.9 (2.2-7.0), p = 3.5 x 10(-7)] and 5kb-promoter regions [OR = 2.3 (1.5-3.6), p = 3 x 10(-4)] compared to SNPs randomly selected from genotyping arrays. Although 88% of TASs were intronic (45%) or intergenic (43%), TASs were not overrepresented in introns and were significantly depleted in intergenic regions [OR = 0.44 (0.34-0.58), p = 2.0 x 10(-9)]. Only slightly more TASs than expected by chance were predicted to be in regions under positive selection [OR = 1.3 (0.8-2.1), p = 0.2]. This new online resource, together with bioinformatic predictions of the underlying functionality at trait/disease-associated loci, is well-suited to guide future investigations of the role of common variants in complex disease etiology.
authors.affiliation: Office of Population Genomics, Genome Technology Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, and National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Lucia A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Hindorff
authors.forename: Praveen
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sethupathy
authors.forename: Heather A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Junkins
authors.forename: Erin M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.forename: Jayashri P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Mehta
authors.forename: Francis S
authors.initials: FS
authors.lastname: Collins
authors.forename: Teri A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Manolio
mesh_terms: D004194:Disease / Q000235:genetics; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide