Regulatory Variants on the Leukocyte Immunoglobulin-Like Receptor Gene Cluster are Associated with Crohn's Disease and Interact with Regulatory Variants for TAP2

Crohn's disease [CD] has a complex polygenic aetiology with high heritability. There is ongoing effort to identify novel variants associated with susceptibility to CD through a genome-wide association study [GWAS] in large Korean populations. Genome-wide variant data from 902 Korean patients with CD and 72 179 controls were used to assess the genetic associations in a meta-analysis with previous Korean GWAS results from 1621 patients with CD and 4419 controls. Epistatic interactions between CD-risk variants of interest were tested using a multivariate logistic regression model with an interaction term. We identified two novel genetic associations with the risk of CD near ZBTB38 and within the leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor [LILR] gene cluster [p