Exome chip association study excluded the involvement of rare coding variants with large effect sizes in the etiology of anorectal malformations

IntroductionAnorectal malformations (ARM) are rare congenital malformations, resulting from disturbed hindgut development. A genetic etiology has been suggested, but evidence for the involvement of specific genes is scarce. We evaluated the contribution of rare and low-frequency coding variants in ARM etiology, assuming a multifactorial model.MethodsWe analyzed 568 Caucasian ARM patients and 1,860 population-based controls using the Illumina Human Exome Beadchip array, which contains >240,000 rare and low-frequency coding variants. GenomeStudio clustering and calling was followed by re-calling of 'no-calls' using zCall for patients and controls simultaneously. Single variant and gene-bas…