Identification of Disease Susceptibility Genes in the Idiopathic Inflammatory Myopathies

Abstract

Background: The idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are a heterogeneous group of rare autoimmune diseases comprising of polymyositis (PM), dermatomyositis (DM), and inclusion body myositis (IBM). They are characterised primarily by muscle weakness, and can present with extramuscular manifestations such as skin rashes, interstitial lung disease and malignancy.Aims: This aim of this study was to identify novel genetic risk factors in IIM and to further elucidate the relationship between genotype and serotype.Methods: 2,566 IIM samples were collected from 14 countries through the Myositis Genetics Consortium (MYOGEN) and genotyped on the Immunochip, a custom array covering 186 established autoimmune susceptibility loci. SNP2HLA was used to impute classical HLA alleles and constituent amino acids.Results: In a combined IIM analysis, the HLA region and PTPN22 reached genome-wide significance (p

Date of Award	1 Aug 2016
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Hector Chinoy (Supervisor) & Janine Lamb (Supervisor)