PLoS ONE (Jan 2016)

Common Variants in CLDN2 and MORC4 Genes Confer Disease Susceptibility in Patients with Chronic Pancreatitis.

  • Anil K Giri,
  • Shallu Midha,
  • Priyanka Banerjee,
  • Ankita Agrawal,
  • Syed Jafar Mehdi,
  • Rajan Dhingra,
  • Ismeet Kaur,
  • Ramesh Kumar G,
  • Ritika Lakhotia,
  • Saurabh Ghosh,
  • Kshaunish Das,
  • Samir Mohindra,
  • Surinder Rana,
  • Deepak K Bhasin,
  • Pramod K Garg,
  • Dwaipayan Bharadwaj,
  • INDIPAN and INDICO Consortium

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147345
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
p. e0147345

Abstract

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A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified association with variants in X-linked CLDN2 and MORC4, and PRSS1-PRSS2 loci with chronic pancreatitis (CP) in North American patients of European ancestry. We selected 9 variants from the reported GWAS and replicated the association with CP in Indian patients by genotyping 1807 unrelated Indians of Indo-European ethnicity, including 519 patients with CP and 1288 controls. The etiology of CP was idiopathic in 83.62% and alcoholic in 16.38% of 519 patients. Our study confirmed a significant association of 2 variants in CLDN2 gene (rs4409525-OR 1.71, P = 1.38 x 10-09; rs12008279-OR 1.56, P = 1.53 x 10-04) and 2 variants in MORC4 gene (rs12688220-OR 1.72, P = 9.20 x 10-09; rs6622126-OR 1.75, P = 4.04x10-05) in Indian patients with CP. We also found significant association at PRSS1-PRSS2 locus (OR 0.60; P = 9.92 x 10-06) and SAMD12-TNFRSF11B (OR 0.49, 95% CI [0.31-0.78], P = 0.0027). A variant in the gene MORC4 (rs12688220) showed significant interaction with alcohol (OR for homozygous and heterozygous risk allele -14.62 and 1.51 respectively, P = 0.0068) suggesting gene-environment interaction. A combined analysis of the genes CLDN2 and MORC4 based on an effective risk allele score revealed a higher percentage of individuals homozygous for the risk allele in CP cases with 5.09 fold enhanced risk in individuals with 7 or more effective risk alleles compared with individuals with 3 or less risk alleles (P = 1.88 x 10-14). Genetic variants in CLDN2 and MORC4 genes were associated with CP in Indian patients.