Genome-wide meta-analysis of pneumonia suggests a role for mucin biology and provides novel drug repurposing opportunities (Updated September 4, 2021)

摘要

2021 SEP 21 (NewsRx) - By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Disease Prevention Daily - According to news reporting based on a preprint abstract, our journalists obtained the following quote sourced from medrxiv.org: "Pneumonia remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, particularly amongst the elderly and young children. "We performed a genome-wide meta-analysis of lifetime pneumonia diagnosis (N=266,277), that encompassed the largest collection of cases published to date. Genome-wide significant associations with pneumonia were uncovered for the first time beyond the major histocompatibility complex region, with three novel loci, including a signal fine-mapped to a cluster of mucin genes. Moreover, we demonstrated evidence of a polygenic effect of common and low frequency pneumonia associated variation impacting several other mucin genes and O-glycosylation, further suggesting a role for these processes in pneumonia pathophysiology The pneumonia GWAS was then leveraged to identify drug repurposing opportunities, including evidence that supports the use of lipid modifying agents in the prevention and treatment of the disorder.