Gene-Based Analysis Reveals Sex-Specific Genetic Risk Factors of COPD.

Sex-specific differences have been noted among people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but whether these differences are attributable to genetic variation is poorly understood. The availability of large biobanks with deeply phenotyped subjects such as the UK Biobank enables the investigation of sex-specific genetic associations that may provide new insights into COPD risk factors. We performed sex-stratified genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of COPD (male: 12,958 cases and 95,631 controls; female: 11,311 cases and 123,714 controls) and found that while most associations were shared between sexes, several regions had sex-specific contributions, including respiratory viral infection-related loci in/near C5orf56 and PELI1. Using the newly developed R package 'snpsettest', we performed gene-based association tests and identified gene-level sex-specific associations, including C5orf56 on 5q31.1, CFDP1/TMEM170A/CHST6 on 16q23.1 and ASTN2/TRIM32 on 9q33.1. Our results identified promising genes to pursue in functional studies to better understand sexual dimorphism in COPD.