A variant in MCF2L is associated with osteoarthritis.
Day-Williams AG., Southam L., Panoutsopoulou K., Rayner NW., Esko T., Estrada K., Helgadottir HT., Hofman A., Ingvarsson T., Jonsson H., Keis A., Kerkhof HJM., Thorleifsson G., Arden NK., Carr A., Chapman K., Deloukas P., Loughlin J., McCaskie A., Ollier WER., Ralston SH., Spector TD., Wallis GA., Wilkinson JM., Aslam N., Birell F., Carluke I., Joseph J., Rai A., Reed M., Walker K., arcOGEN Consortium None., Doherty SA., Jonsdottir I., Maciewicz RA., Muir KR., Metspalu A., Rivadeneira F., Stefansson K., Styrkarsdottir U., Uitterlinden AG., van Meurs JBJ., Zhang W., Valdes AM., Doherty M., Zeggini E.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent, heritable degenerative joint disease with a substantial public health impact. We used a 1000-Genomes-Project-based imputation in a genome-wide association scan for osteoarthritis (3177 OA cases and 4894 controls) to detect a previously unidentified risk locus. We discovered a small disease-associated set of variants on chromosome 13. Through large-scale replication, we establish a robust association with SNPs in MCF2L (rs11842874, combined odds ratio [95% confidence interval] 1.17 [1.11-1.23], p = 2.1 × 10(-8)) across a total of 19,041 OA cases and 24,504 controls of European descent. This risk locus represents the third established signal for OA overall. MCF2L regulates a nerve growth factor (NGF), and treatment with a humanized monoclonal antibody against NGF is associated with reduction in pain and improvement in function for knee OA patients.