Blood Advances (Jan 2020)

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of multiple myeloma among men and women of African ancestry

  • Zhaohui Du,
  • Niels Weinhold,
  • Gregory Chi Song,
  • Kristin A. Rand,
  • David J. Van Den Berg,
  • Amie E. Hwang,
  • Xin Sheng,
  • Victor Hom,
  • Sikander Ailawadhi,
  • Ajay K. Nooka,
  • Seema Singhal,
  • Karen Pawlish,
  • Edward S. Peters,
  • Cathryn Bock,
  • Ann Mohrbacher,
  • Alexander Stram,
  • Sonja I. Berndt,
  • William J. Blot,
  • Graham Casey,
  • Victoria L. Stevens,
  • Rick Kittles,
  • Phyllis J. Goodman,
  • W. Ryan Diver,
  • Anselm Hennis,
  • Barbara Nemesure,
  • Eric A. Klein,
  • Benjamin A. Rybicki,
  • Janet L. Stanford,
  • John S. Witte,
  • Lisa Signorello,
  • Esther M. John,
  • Leslie Bernstein,
  • Antoinette M. Stroup,
  • Owen W. Stephens,
  • Maurizio Zangari,
  • Frits Van Rhee,
  • Andrew Olshan,
  • Wei Zheng,
  • Jennifer J. Hu,
  • Regina Ziegler,
  • Sarah J. Nyante,
  • Sue Ann Ingles,
  • Michael F. Press,
  • John David Carpten,
  • Stephen J. Chanock,
  • Jayesh Mehta,
  • Graham A. Colditz,
  • Jeffrey Wolf,
  • Thomas G. Martin,
  • Michael Tomasson,
  • Mark A. Fiala,
  • Howard Terebelo,
  • Nalini Janakiraman,
  • Laurence Kolonel,
  • Kenneth C. Anderson,
  • Loic Le Marchand,
  • Daniel Auclair,
  • Brian C.-H. Chiu,
  • Elad Ziv,
  • Daniel Stram,
  • Ravi Vij,
  • Leon Bernal-Mizrachi,
  • Gareth J. Morgan,
  • Jeffrey A. Zonder,
  • Carol Ann Huff,
  • Sagar Lonial,
  • Robert Z. Orlowski,
  • David V. Conti,
  • Christopher A. Haiman,
  • Wendy Cozen

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 181 – 190

Abstract

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Abstract: Persons of African ancestry (AA) have a twofold higher risk for multiple myeloma (MM) compared with persons of European ancestry (EA). Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) support a genetic contribution to MM etiology in individuals of EA. Little is known about genetic risk factors for MM in individuals of AA. We performed a meta-analysis of 2 GWASs of MM in 1813 cases and 8871 controls and conducted an admixture mapping scan to identify risk alleles. We fine-mapped the 23 known susceptibility loci to find markers that could better capture MM risk in individuals of AA and constructed a polygenic risk score (PRS) to assess the aggregated effect of known MM risk alleles. In GWAS meta-analysis, we identified 2 suggestive novel loci located at 9p24.3 and 9p13.1 at P < 1 × 10−6; however, no genome-wide significant association was noted. In admixture mapping, we observed a genome-wide significant inverse association between local AA at 2p24.1-23.1 and MM risk in AA individuals. Of the 23 known EA risk variants, 20 showed directional consistency, and 9 replicated at P < .05 in AA individuals. In 8 regions, we identified markers that better capture MM risk in persons with AA. AA individuals with a PRS in the top 10% had a 1.82-fold (95% confidence interval, 1.56-2.11) increased MM risk compared with those with average risk (25%-75%). The strongest functional association was between the risk allele for variant rs56219066 at 5q15 and lower ELL2 expression (P = 5.1 × 10−12). Our study shows that common genetic variation contributes to MM risk in individuals with AA.