Genetic pleiotropy between age-related macular degeneration and 16 complex diseases and traits

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common condition of vision loss with disease development strongly influenced by environmental and genetic factors. Recently, 34 loci were associated with AMD at genome-wide significance. So far, little is known about a genetic overlap between AMD and other complex diseases or disease-relevant traits. For each of 60 complex diseases/traits with publicly available genome-wide significant association data, the lead genetic variant per independent locus was extracted and a genetic score was calculated for each disease/trait as the weighted sum of risk alleles. The association with AMD was estimated based on 16,144 AMD cases and 17,832 controls using logistic regression. Of the respective disease/trait variance, the 60 genetic scores explained on average 4.8% (0.27-20.69%) and 16 of them were found to be significantly associated with AMD (Q-values