Scholz et al., 2023

(accepted in principle)

X-chromosome and kidney function: Evidence from a multi-trait genetic analysis of 908,697 individuals reveals sex-specific and sex-differential findings in genes regulated by androgen-response elements

X-chromosomal genetic variants are understudied but can yield valuable insights into sexually dimorphic human traits and diseases. We performed a sex-stratified cross-ancestry X-chromosome-wide association meta-analysis of seven kidney-related traits (n=908,697), identifying 23 loci genome-wide significantly associated with two of the traits: 7 for uric acid and 16 for estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), including four novel eGFR loci containing the functionally plausible prioritized genes ACSL4, CLDN2, TSPAN6 and the female-specific DRP2. Further, we identified five novel sex-interactions, comprising male-specific effects at FAM9B and AR/EDA2R, and three sex-differential findings with larger genetic effect sizes in males at DCAF12L1 and MST4 and larger effect sizes in females at HPRT1. All prioritized genes in loci showing significant sex-interactions were located next to androgen response elements (ARE). Five ARE genes showed sex-differential expressions. This study contributes new insights into sex-dimorphisms of kidney traits along with new prioritized gene targets for further molecular research.

Please refer to Scholz et al. 2023 for more details on the analyses.Contact markus.scholz@imise.uni-leipzig.de if you have questions.

Data set description

Trans-ethnic meta-analysis of GWAS data (chromosome X only) for eGFR, UA, BUN, CKD, UACR, MA and Gout from the Chronic Kidney Disease Genetics Consortium and the UK Biobank.

Within each file, the data are presented as follows:

Phenotypes

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