Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Genome-wide association study of circulating interleukin 6 levels identifies novel loci

  • Tarunveer S. Ahluwalia
  • , Bram P. Prins
  • , Mohammadreza Abdollahi
  • , Nicola J. Armstrong
  • , Stella Aslibekyan
  • , Lisa Bain
  • , Barbara Jefferis
  • , Jens Baumert
  • , Marian Beekman
  • , Yoav Ben-Shlomo
  • , Joshua C. Bis
  • , Braxton D. Mitchell
  • , Eco De Geus
  • , Graciela E. Delgado
  • , Diana Marek
  • , Joel Eriksson
  • , Eero Kajantie
  • , Stavroula Kanoni
  • , John P. Kemp
  • , Chen Lu
  • Riccardo E. Marioni, Stela McLachlan, Yuri Milaneschi, Ilja M. Nolte, Alexandros M. Petrelis, Eleonora Porcu, Maria Sabater-Lleal, Elnaz Naderi, Ilkka Seppälä, Tina Shah, Gaurav Singhal, Marie Standl, Alexander Teumer, Anbupalam Thalamuthu, Elisabeth Thiering, Stella Trompet, Christie M. Ballantyne, Emelia J. Benjamin, Juan P. Casas, Catherine Toben, George Dedoussis, Joris Deelen, Peter Durda, Jorgen Engmann, Mary F. Feitosa, Harald Grallert, Ann Hammarstedt, Sarah E. Harris, Georg Homuth, Jouke Jan Hottenga, Sirpa Jalkanen, Yalda Jamshidi, Magdalene C. Jawahar, Tine Jess, Mika Kivimaki, Marcus E. Kleber, Jari Lahti, Yongmei Liu, Pedro Marques-Vidal, Dan Mellström, Simon P. Mooijaart, Martina Müller-Nurasyid, Brenda Penninx, Joana A. Revez, Peter Rossing, Katri Raïkkönen, Naveed Sattar, Hubert Scharnagl, Bengt Sennblad, Angela Silveira, Beate St Pourcain, Nicholas J. Timpson, Julian Trollor, Jenny Van Dongen, Diana Van Heemst, Sophie Visvikis-Siest, Peter Vollenweider, Uwe Völker, Melanie Waldenberger, Gonneke Willemsen, Delilah Zabaneh, Richard W. Morris, Donna K. Arnett, Bernhard T. Baune, Dorret I. Boomsma, Yen Pei C. Chang, Ian J. Deary, Panos Deloukas, Johan G. Eriksson, David M. Evans, Manuel A. Ferreira, Tom Gaunt, Vilmundur Gudnason, Anders Hamsten, Joachim Heinrich, Aroon Hingorani, Steve E. Humphries, J. Wouter Jukema, Wolfgang Koenig, Meena Kumari, Zoltan Kutalik, Deborah A. Lawlor, Terho Lehtimäki, Winfried März, Karen A. Mather, Silvia Naitza, Matthias Nauck, Claes Ohlsson, Jackie F. Price, Olli Raitakari, Ken Rice, Perminder S. Sachdev, Eline Slagboom, Thorkild I.A. Sørensen, Tim Spector, David Stacey, Maria G. Stathopoulou, Toshiko Tanaka, S. Goya Wannamethee, Peter Whincup, Jerome I. Rotter, Abbas Dehghan, Eric Boerwinkle, Bruce M. Psaty, Harold Snieder, Behrooz Z. Alizadeh*
*Corresponding author for this work
  • Novo Nordisk Foundation
  • University of Copenhagen
  • University of Groningen
  • Murdoch University
  • University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • Queensland Institute of Medical Research
  • University College London
  • Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
  • Leiden University
  • University of Bristol
  • University of Washington
  • University of Maryland, Baltimore
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Amsterdam University Medical Centers
  • Heidelberg University 
  • Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
  • University of Gothenburg
  • National Institute for Health and Welfare
  • Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa
  • Queen Mary University of London
  • University of Queensland
  • Boston University
  • University of Edinburgh
  • Université de Lorraine
  • National Research Council of Italy
  • Karolinska Institutet
  • Research Institute of the Santa Creu i Sant Pau Hospital
  • Tampere University
  • University of Adelaide
  • University of Greifswald
  • University of New South Wales
  • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Baylor College of Medicine
  • National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s and Boston University’s Framingham Heart Study
  • Department of Veterans Affairs
  • Harokopio University
  • Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing
  • University of Vermont
  • Washington University St. Louis
  • German Center for Diabetes Research
  • University of Turku
  • St. George's University of London
  • Statens Serum Institut
  • University of Helsinki
  • Wake Forest University
  • University of Lausanne
  • Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  • University of Glasgow
  • Medical University of Graz
  • Uppsala University
  • Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
  • Radboud University Nijmegen
  • University of Kentucky
  • University of Melbourne
  • University of Münster
  • Icelandic Heart Association
  • University of Iceland
  • Durrer Center for Cardiovascular Research
  • Technical University of Munich
  • German Centre for Cardiovascular Research
  • Ulm University
  • University of Essex
  • SYNLAB International GmbH
  • Neuroscience Research Australia
  • Prince of Wales Hospital
  • King's College London
  • University of Cambridge
  • National Institutes of Health
  • University of California at Los Angeles
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Interleukin 6 (IL-6) is a multifunctional cytokine with both pro-A nd anti-inflammatory properties with a heritability estimate of up to 61%. The circulating levels of IL-6 in blood have been associated with an increased risk of complex disease pathogenesis. We conducted a two-staged, discovery and replication meta genome-wide association study (GWAS) of circulating serum IL-6 levels comprising up to 67 428 (ndiscovery = 52 654 and nreplication = 14 774) individuals of European ancestry. The inverse variance fixed effects based discovery meta-analysis, followed by replication led to the identification of two independent loci, IL1F10/IL1RN rs6734238 on chromosome (Chr) 2q14, (Pcombined = 1.8 × 10-11), HLA-DRB1/DRB5 rs660895 on Chr6p21 (Pcombined = 1.5 × 10-10) in the combined meta-analyses of all samples. We also replicated the IL6R rs4537545 locus on Chr1q21 (Pcombined = 1.2 × 10-122). Our study identifies novel loci for circulating IL-6 levels uncovering new immunological and inflammatory pathways that may influence IL-6 pathobiology.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)393-409
Number of pages17
JournalHuman Molecular Genetics
Volume30
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2021
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Genome-wide association study of circulating interleukin 6 levels identifies novel loci'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this