0000000000211040
AUTHOR
Julio Perez De La Serna
Common variants in the HLA-DQ region confer susceptibility to idiopathic achalasia
Idiopathic achalasia is characterized by a failure of the lower esophageal sphincter to relax due to a loss of neurons in the myenteric plexus(1,2). This ultimately leads to massive dilatation and an irreversibly impaired megaesophagus. We performed a genetic association study in 1,068 achalasia cases and 4,242 controls and fine-mapped a strong MHC association signal by imputing classical HLA haplotypes and amino acid polymorphisms. An eight-residue insertion at position 227-234 in the cytoplasmic tail of HLA-DQ beta 1 (encoded by HLA-DQB1*05:03 and HLA-DQB1*06:01) confers the strongest risk for achalasia (P = 1.73 x 10(-19)). In addition, two amino acid substitutions in the. extracellular …
The HLA-DQβ1 insertion is a strong achalasia risk factor and displays a geospatial north-south gradient among Europeans.
Idiopathic achalasia is a severe motility disorder of the esophagus and is characterized by a failure of the lower esophageal sphincter to relax due to a loss of neurons in the myenteric plexus. Most recently, we identified an eight-amino-acid insertion in the cytoplasmic tail of HLA-DQβ1 as strong achalasia risk factor in a sample set from Central Europe, Italy and Spain. Here, we tested whether the HLA-DQβ1 insertion also confers achalasia risk in the Polish and Swedish population. We could replicate the initial findings and the insertion shows strong achalasia association in both samples (Poland P=1.84 × 10(-04), Sweden P=7.44 × 10(-05)). Combining all five European data sets - Central E…