ArticlePLoS genetics2013
High trans-ethnic replicability of GWAS results implies common causal variants.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 134 papers, 15 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
134 citing papers in PubMed, 15 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- GWAS Meta-analysis of Kidney Function Traits in Japanese Populations.Journal of epidemiology · 2024Pooled it
- Identification of susceptibility loci and relevant cell type for IgA nephropathy in Han Chinese by integrative genome-wide analysis.Frontiers of medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Causal effects on complex traits are similar for common variants across segments of different continental ancestries within admixed individuals.Nature genetics · 2023Pooled it
- An empirical Bayes approach to improving population-specific genetic association estimation by leveraging cross-population data.Genetic epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Cross-ancestry genome-wide meta-analysis of 61,047 cases and 947,237 controls identifies new susceptibility loci contributing to lung cancer.Nature genetics · 2022Pooled it
- Mendelian randomization analysis of 37 clinical factors and coronary artery disease in East Asian and European populations.Genome medicine · 2022Pooled it
- A multi-population phenome-wide association study of genetically-predicted height in the Million Veteran Program.PLoS genetics · 2022Pooled it
- A Meta-Analysis of the Transferability of Bone Mineral Density Genetic Loci Associations From European to African Ancestry Populations.Journal of bone and mineral research : the official journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research · 2021Pooled it
- Genome-Wide Association Meta-Analysis of Individuals of European Ancestry Identifies Suggestive Loci for Sodium Intake, Potassium Intake, and Their Ratio Measured from 24-Hour or Half-Day Urine Samples.The Journal of nutrition · 2020Pooled it
- Trans-ethnic meta-regression of genome-wide association studies accounting for ancestry increases power for discovery and improves fine-mapping resolution.Human molecular genetics · 2017Pooled it
- Trans-ethnic meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for Hirschsprung disease.Human molecular genetics · 2016Pooled it
- Fine-mapping, novel loci identification, and SNP association transferability in a genome-wide association study of QRS duration in African Americans.Human molecular genetics · 2016Pooled it
- Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies multiple novel associations and ethnic heterogeneity of psoriasis susceptibility.Nature communications · 2015Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of adult height in East Asians identifies 17 novel loci.Human molecular genetics · 2015Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies two loci associated with circulating osteoprotegerin levels.Human molecular genetics · 2014Pooled it
- Extending genome-wide association studies to admixed cohorts with high degrees of relatedness.Nature genetics · 2026Article
- The Multiethnic Cohort: A Resource for the Study of Genetic and Nongenetic Cancer Risk across Populations.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2026Article
- Bidirectional Mendelian randomization of leukocyte counts, renal function, and Lipocalin-2 Levels: disentangling the genetic links, causal pathways and cardiovascular outcomes.Journal of human genetics · 2026Article
- Neutrophil extracellular traps-associated candidate genes in IgA vasculitis: an exploratory multi-omics analysis integrating transcriptomics and Mendelian randomization.Pediatric rheumatology online journal · 2026Article
- An integrative association analysis for complex diseases in underrepresented groups by leveraging the trans-ethnic genetic similarity.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2026Article
74 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have detected many disease associations. However, the reported variants tend to explain small fractions of risk, and there are doubts about issues such as the portability of findings over different ethnic groups or the relative roles of rare versus common variants in the genetic architecture of complex disease. Studying the degree of sharing of disease-associated variants across populations can help in solving these issues. We present a comprehensive survey of GWAS replicability across 28 diseases. Most loci and SNPs discovered in Europeans for these conditions have been extensively replicated using peoples of European and East Asian ancestry, while the replication with individuals of African ancestry is much less common. We found a strong and significant correlation of Odds Ratios across Europeans and East Asians, indicating that underlying causal variants are common and shared between the two ancestries. Moreover, SNPs that failed to replicate in East Asians map into genomic regions where Linkage Disequilibrium patterns differ significantly between populations. Finally, we observed that GWAS with larger sample sizes have detected variants with weaker effects rather than with lower frequencies. Our results indicate that most GWAS results are due to common variants. In addition, the sharing of disease alleles and the high correlation in their effect sizes suggest that most of the underlying causal variants are shared between Europeans and East Asians and that they tend to map close to the associated marker SNPs.
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