Assessment of sex-specific effects in a genome-wide association study of rheumatoid arthritis

Journal article

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is three times more common in females than in males, suggesting that sex may play a role in modifying genetic associations with disease. We have addressed this hypothesis by performing sex-differentiated and sex-interaction analyses of a genome-wide association study of RA in a North American population. Our results identify a number of novel associations that demonstrate strong evidence of association in both sexes combined, with no evidence of heterogeneity in risk between males and females. However, our analyses also highlight a number of associations with RA in males or females only. These signals may represent true sex-specific effects, or may reflect a lack of power to detect association in the smaller sample of males, and thus warrant further investigation.

Authors: Zhuang, J; Morris, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: BioMed Central
• Journal: BMC Proceedings
• Volume: 3
• Issue: S7
• Article number: S90
• Publication date: 2009-12-15
• DOI: 10.1186/1753-6561-3-s7-s90
• EISSN: 1753-6561
• Language: English
• Keywords: Rheumatoid Arthritis; Rheumatoid Arthritis Susceptibility; Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium; Major Histocompatibility Complex; SBTMR; North American Population