High-density genotyping of immune-related loci identifies new SLE risk variants in individuals with Asian ancestry

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) has a strong but incompletely understood genetic architecture. We conducted an association study with replication in 4,492 SLE cases and 12,675 controls from six East-Asian cohorts, to identify novel and better localize known SLE susceptibility loci. We identified 10 novel loci as well as 20 known loci with genome-wide significance. Among the novel loci, the most significant was GTF2IRD1-GTF2I at 7q11.23 (rs73366469, P(meta)=3.75×10(−117), OR=2.38), followed by DEF6, IL12B, TCF7, TERT, CD226, PCNXL3, RASGRP1, SYNGR1 and SIGLEC6. We localized the most likely functional variants for each locus by analyzing epigenetic marks and gene regulation data. Ten putative variants are known to alter cis- or trans-gene expression. Enrichment analysis highlights the importance of these loci in B- and T-cell biology. Together with previously known loci, the explained heritability of SLE increases to 24%. Novel loci share functional and ontological characteristics with previously reported loci, and are possible drug targets for SLE therapeutics.