title: Evaluation of genetic loci influencing adult height in the Japanese population.
abstract: Adult height is a highly heritable, classic polygenic trait. The recent advent of genome-wide association studies has led to the identification of robust association at common variants influencing the normal variation of height; the number of loci has now risen to 50. The present study tested the potential overlap of height associations at 46 loci that were previously reported in European-descent populations with those among 1530 Japanese subjects and also attempted to replicate the suggestive association signals that were previously reported in East Asians alone. We found a total of 20 independent loci to be significantly (P<0.05) associated with height among the Japanese subjects (N< or =6814); 19 loci were originally identified in Europeans and the remaining 1 locus (ZFAT) was previously reported in Koreans (P=3.8 x 10(-9) with the Japanese and Korean data combined for ZFAT). Although 41% (19 of 46) of the loci were nominally replicated, a higher proportion of the tested loci seemed to overlap between the Japanese and Europeans; 83% (38 of 46) of the loci showed a concordant direction of association between the two ethnic groups. Despite the substantial inter-population overlap observed in the present study, further investigation is warranted to search for loci with enhanced genetic impacts in East Asians than in Europeans.
authors.affiliation: Department of Gene Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Research Institute, International Medical Center of Japan, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Fumihiko
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Takeuchi
authors.forename: Toru
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nabika
authors.forename: Masato
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Isono
authors.forename: Tomohiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Katsuya
authors.forename: Takao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sugiyama
authors.forename: Shuhei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
authors.forename: Shotai
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kobayashi
authors.forename: Yukio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yamori
authors.forename: Toshio
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ogihara
authors.forename: Norihiro
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kato
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000483:Alleles; D044466:Asian People / Q000235:genetics; D001827:Body Height / Q000235:genetics*; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D005787:Gene Frequency; D015894:Genome, Human; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007723:Korea; D020412:Multifactorial Inheritance / Q000235:genetics*; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics