Genome-wide association study on coronary artery disease in type 1 diabetes suggests beta-defensin 127 as a risk locus: Cardiovasc Res

AIMS: Diabetes is a known risk factor for coronary artery disease. There is accumulating evidence that coronary artery disease pathogenesis differs for individuals with type 1 diabetes. However, the genetic background has not been extensively studied. We aimed to discover genetic loci increasing coronary artery disease susceptibility especially in type 1 diabetes, to examine the function of these discoveries and to study the role of the known risk loci in type 1 diabetes. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed the largest genome-wide association study to date for coronary artery disease in type 1 diabetes, comprising 4869 individuals with type 1 diabetes (cases/controls: 941/3928). Two loci reached genome-wide significance, rs1970112 in CDKN2B-AS1 (OR = 1.32, p=1.50 x 10-8), and rs6055069 on DEFB127 promoter (OR = 4.17, p=2.35 x 10-9), with consistent results in survival analysis. The CDKN2B-AS1 variant replicated (p=0.04) when adjusted for diabetic kidney disease in three additional type 1 diabetes cohorts (cases/controls: 434/3123). Furthermore, we explored the function of the lead discoveries with a cardio-phenome-wide analysis. Among the eight suggestive loci (p