Abstract
BackgroundA growing number of studies clearly demonstrate a substantial association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cardiovascular diseases (CVD), although little is known about the shared genetics that contribute to this association.MethodsWe conducted a large-scale cross-trait genome-wide association study to investigate genetic overlap between COPD (Ncase = 12,550, Ncontrol = 46,368) from the International COPD Genetics Consortium and four primary cardiac traits: resting heart rate (RHR) (N = 458,969), high blood pressure (HBP) (Ncase = 144,793, Ncontrol = 313,761), coronary artery disease (CAD)(Ncase = 60,801, Ncontrol = 123,504), and stroke (Ncase = 40,585, Ncontrol = 406,111) from UK Biobank, CARDIoGRAMplusC4D Consortium, and International Stroke Genetics Consortium data.ResultsRHR and HBP had modest genetic correlation, and CAD had borderline evidence with COPD at a genome-wide level. We found evidence of local genetic correlation with particular regions of the genome. Cross-trait meta-analysis of COPD identified 21 loci jointly associated with RHR, 22 loci with HBP, and 3 loci with CAD. Functional analysis revealed that shared genes were enriched in smoking-related pathways and in cardiovascular, nervous, and immune system tissues. An examination of smoking-related genetic variants identified SNPs located in 15q25.1 region associated with cigarettes per day, with effects on RHR and CAD. A Mendelian randomization analysis showed a significant positive causal effect of COPD on RHR (causal estimate = 0.1374, P = 0.008).ConclusionIn a set of large-scale GWAS, we identify evidence of shared genetics between COPD and cardiac traits.
9 Keywords
- Cardiovascular Diseases
 
- Databases, Genetic
 
- Genetic Predisposition to Disease
 
- Genetic Variation
 
- Genome-Wide Association Study
 
- Humans
 
- Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
 
- Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive
 
- Quantitative Trait, Heritable
 
 
13 Authors
- Zhaozhong Zhu
 
- Xiaofang Wang
 
- Xihao Li
 
- Yifei Lin
 
- Sipeng Shen
 
- Cong-Lin Liu
 
- Brain D. Hobbs
 
- Kohei Hasegawa
 
- Liming Liang
 
- H. Marike Boezen
 
- Carlos A. Camargo
 
- Michael H. Cho
 
- David C. Christiani
 
 
1  Application
| Application ID | Title | 
| 16549 | Components of heritability in a UK Biobank cohort |