PARK10 is a major locus for sporadic neuropathologically confirmed Parkinson disease

Evidence that reducing heterogeneity inherent in the diagnosis of PD could maximise our understanding of the biology... until we are better at identifying PD in life we are always constrained by this matter.  

Neurology. 2015 Feb 6. pii: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001332. [Epub ahead of print]

Beecham GW, Dickson DW, Scott WK, Martin ER, Schellenberg G, Nuytemans K, Larson EB, Buxbaum JD, Trojanowski JQ, Van Deerlin VM, Hurtig HI, Mash DC, Beach TG, Troncoso JC, Pletnikova O, Frosch MP, Ghetti B, Foroud TM, Honig LS, Marder K, Vonsattel JP, Goldman SM, Vinters HV, Ross OA, Wszolek ZK, Wang L, Dykxhoorn DM, Pericak-Vance MA, Montine TJ, Leverenz JB, Dawson TM, Vance JM.

OBJECTIVE:

To minimize pathologic heterogeneity in genetic studies of Parkinson disease (PD), the Autopsy-Confirmed Parkinson Disease Genetics Consortium conducted a genome-wide association study using both patients with neuropathologically confirmed PD and controls.

METHODS:

Four hundred eighty-four cases and 1,145 controls met neuropathologic diagnostic criteria, were genotyped, and then imputed to 3,922,209 variants for genome-wide association study analysis.

RESULTS:

A small region on chromosome 1 was strongly associated with PD (rs10788972; p = 6.2 × 10-8). The association peak lies within and very close to the maximum linkage peaks of 2 prior positive linkage studies defining the PARK10 locus. We demonstrate that rs10788972 is in strong linkage disequilibrium with rs914722, the single nucleotide polymorphism defining the PARK10 haplotype previously shown to be significantly associated with age at onset in PD. The region containing the PARK10 locus was significantly reduced from 10.6 megabases to 100 kilobases and contains 4 known genes: TCEANC2, TMEM59, miR-4781, and LDLRAD1.

CONCLUSIONS:

We confirm the association of a PARK10 haplotype with the risk of developing idiopathic PD. Furthermore, we significantly reduce the size of the PARK10 region. None of the candidate genes in the new PARK10 region have been previously implicated in the biology of PD, suggesting new areas of potential research. This study strongly suggests that reducing pathologic heterogeneity may enhance the application of genetic association studies to PD.