PLoS Genetics (Apr 2020)

A missense variant in Mitochondrial Amidoxime Reducing Component 1 gene and protection against liver disease.

  • Connor A Emdin,
  • Mary E Haas,
  • Amit V Khera,
  • Krishna Aragam,
  • Mark Chaffin,
  • Derek Klarin,
  • George Hindy,
  • Lan Jiang,
  • Wei-Qi Wei,
  • Qiping Feng,
  • Juha Karjalainen,
  • Aki Havulinna,
  • Tuomo Kiiskinen,
  • Alexander Bick,
  • Diego Ardissino,
  • James G Wilson,
  • Heribert Schunkert,
  • Ruth McPherson,
  • Hugh Watkins,
  • Roberto Elosua,
  • Matthew J Bown,
  • Nilesh J Samani,
  • Usman Baber,
  • Jeanette Erdmann,
  • Namrata Gupta,
  • John Danesh,
  • Danish Saleheen,
  • Kyong-Mi Chang,
  • Marijana Vujkovic,
  • Ben Voight,
  • Scott Damrauer,
  • Julie Lynch,
  • David Kaplan,
  • Marina Serper,
  • Philip Tsao,
  • Million Veteran Program,
  • Josep Mercader,
  • Craig Hanis,
  • Mark Daly,
  • Joshua Denny,
  • Stacey Gabriel,
  • Sekar Kathiresan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008629
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 4
p. e1008629

Abstract

Read online

Analyzing 12,361 all-cause cirrhosis cases and 790,095 controls from eight cohorts, we identify a common missense variant in the Mitochondrial Amidoxime Reducing Component 1 gene (MARC1 p.A165T) that associates with protection from all-cause cirrhosis (OR 0.91, p = 2.3*10-11). This same variant also associates with lower levels of hepatic fat on computed tomographic imaging and lower odds of physician-diagnosed fatty liver as well as lower blood levels of alanine transaminase (-0.025 SD, 3.7*10-43), alkaline phosphatase (-0.025 SD, 1.2*10-37), total cholesterol (-0.030 SD, p = 1.9*10-36) and LDL cholesterol (-0.027 SD, p = 5.1*10-30) levels. We identified a series of additional MARC1 alleles (low-frequency missense p.M187K and rare protein-truncating p.R200Ter) that also associated with lower cholesterol levels, liver enzyme levels and reduced risk of cirrhosis (0 cirrhosis cases for 238 R200Ter carriers versus 17,046 cases of cirrhosis among 759,027 non-carriers, p = 0.04) suggesting that deficiency of the MARC1 enzyme may lower blood cholesterol levels and protect against cirrhosis.