Understanding the genetics of essential tremor has been difficult, but this is now a reasonably large GWAS study conducted by investigators who will have accurately characterise the phenotype... GWAS (like anything) depends on accurate diagnosis of the cases and ideally confident exclusion of the disease in controls... interestingly some of the previously reported 'hits' for essential tremor are not replicated here...
Brain. 2016 Oct 20. pii: aww242. [Epub ahead of print]
Müller SH, Girard SL, Hopfner F, Merner ND, Bourassa CV, Lorenz D, Clark LN, Tittmann L, Soto-Ortolaza AI, Klebe S, Hallett M, Schneider SA, Hodgkinson CA, Lieb W, Wszolek ZK, Pendziwiat M, Lorenzo-Betancor O, Poewe W, Ortega-Cubero S, Seppi K, Rajput A, Hussl A, Rajput AH, Berg D, Dion PA, Wurster I, Shulman JM, Srulijes K, Haubenberger D, Pastor P, Vilariño-Güell C, Postuma RB, Bernard G, Ladwig KH, Dupré N, Jankovic J, Strauch K, Panisset M, Winkelmann J, Testa CM, Reischl E, Zeuner KE, Ross OA, Arzberger T, Chouinard S, Deuschl G, Louis ED, Kuhlenbäumer G, Rouleau GA.
We conducted a genome-wide association study of essential tremor, a common movement disorder characterized mainly by a postural and kinetic tremor of the upper extremities. Twin and family history studies show a high heritability for essential tremor. The molecular genetic determinants of essential tremor are unknown. We included 2807 patients and 6441 controls of European descent in our two-stage genome-wide association study. The 59 most significantly disease-associated markers of the discovery stage were genotyped in the replication stage. After Bonferroni correction two markers, one (rs10937625) located in the serine/threonine kinase STK32B and one (rs17590046) in the transcriptional coactivator PPARGC1A were associated with essential tremor. Three markers (rs12764057, rs10822974, rs7903491) in the cell-adhesion molecule CTNNA3 were significant in the combined analysis of both stages. The expression of STK32B was increased in the cerebellar cortex of patients and expression quantitative trait loci database mining showed association between the protective minor allele of rs10937625 and reduced expression in cerebellar cortex. We found no expression differences related to disease status or marker genotype for the other two genes. Replication of two lead single nucleotide polymorphisms of previous small genome-wide association studies (rs3794087 in SLC1A2, rs9652490 in LINGO1) did not confirm the association with essential tremor.
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