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Sex-Specific Genetic Associations for Barrett's Esophagus and Esophageal Adenocarcinoma.

Gastroenterology

Authors: Jing Dong, Carlo Maj, Spiridon Tsavachidis, Quinn T Ostrom, Puya Gharahkhani, Lesley A Anderson, Anna H Wu, Weimin Ye, Leslie Bernstein, Oleg Borisov, Julia Schröder, Wong-Ho Chow, Marilie D Gammon, Geoffrey Liu, Carlos Caldas, Paul D Pharoah, Harvey A Risch, Andrea May, Christian Gerges, Mario Anders, Marino Venerito, Thomas Schmidt, Jakob R Izbicki, Arnulf H Hölscher, Brigitte Schumacher, Yogesh Vashist, Horst Neuhaus, Thomas Rösch, Michael Knapp, Peter Krawitz, Anne Böhmer, Prasad G Iyer, Brian J Reid, Jesper Lagergren, Nicholas J Shaheen, Douglas A Corley, Ines Gockel, Rebecca C Fitzgerald, Michael B Cook, David C Whiteman, Thomas L Vaughan, Johannes Schumacher, Aaron P Thrift

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA) and its premalignant lesion, Barrett's esophagus (BE), are characterized by a strong and yet unexplained male predominance (with a male-to-female ratio in EA incidence of up to 6:1). Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 20 susceptibility loci for these conditions. However, potential sex differences in genetic associations with BE/EA remain largely unexplored.

METHODS: Given strong genetic overlap, BE and EA cases were combined into a single case group for analysis. These were compared with population-based controls. We performed sex-specific GWAS of BE/EA in 3 separate studies and then used fixed-effects meta-analysis to provide summary estimates for >9 million variants for male and female individuals. A series of downstream analyses were conducted separately in male and female individuals to identify genes associated with BE/EA and the genetic correlations between BE/EA and other traits.

RESULTS: We included 6758 male BE/EA cases, 7489 male controls, 1670 female BE/EA cases, and 6174 female controls. After Bonferroni correction, our meta-analysis of sex-specific GWAS identified 1 variant at chromosome 6q11.1 (rs112894788, KHDRBS2-MTRNR2L9, P = .039) that was statistically significantly associated with BE/EA risk in male individuals only, and 1 variant at chromosome 8p23.1 (rs13259457, PRSS55-RP1L1, P = 0.057) associated, at borderline significance, with BE/EA risk in female individuals only. We also observed strong genetic correlations of BE/EA with gastroesophageal reflux disease in male individuals and obesity in female individuals.

CONCLUSIONS: The identified novel sex-specific variants associated with BE/EA could improve the understanding of the genetic architecture of the disease and the reasons for the male predominance.

Copyright © 2020 AGA Institute. All rights reserved.

PMID: 32918910

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