A Common Complement C3 Variant Is Associated with Protection against Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration in a Japanese Population

摘要

BackgroundGenetic variants in the complement component 3 gene (C3) have been shown to be associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in Caucasian populations of European descent. In particular, a nonsynonymous coding variant, rs2230199 (R102G), is presumed to be the most likely causal variant in the C3 locus based on strong statistical evidence for disease association and mechanistic functional evidence. However, the risk allele is absent or rare (<1%) in Japanese and Chinese populations, and the association of R102G with AMD has not been reported in Asian populations. Genetic heterogeneity of disease-associated variants among different ethnicities is common in complex diseases. Here, we sought to examine whether other common variants in C3 are associated with wet AMD, a common advanced-stage manifestation of AMD, in a Japanese population.