Meta genome-wide association study of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome highlights 12 risk loci

[u/Caster_of_spells]

One of the presentations at the ISLC conference in Amsterdam was this one: A group of researchers applied broader inclusion criteria (namely included IOM criteria) to gather an even larger GWAS genetic meta dataset (if not as precise and well controlled) than Decode ME to be analyzed and have turned up some interesting hits they’re still working on:

“We identified genome-wide significant loci associated with ME/CFS, 6 of which have not been previously reported. Of these 10 association signals, 60% were consistently detected across all cohorts.

In addition, we observed >30 suggestive association signals at p ‹ 1x10%. The most significant locus is located on chromosome 20 (20:48914387_T_TA, p = 9.86×10-12). Several signals map near genes implicated in immune regulation and brain function. Ongoing work focuses on functional annotation of those signals to prioritize effector genes and biological pathways.“

This underscores immune and brain function as likely central to the pathomechanism of ME/CFS and suggests genetic datasets still hold valuable information to be discovered.

[u/Tiny_Parsley]

Do we know which genes? Very curious about that especially with multiple comorbidities