Common variants at 11p13 are associated with susceptibility to tuberculosis

Christian Meyer and colleagues follow a previously reported GWAS for tuberculosis susceptibility with association analyses using 1000 Genomes Project imputation in two African studies and replication in Indonesian and Russian cohorts. They identify a new tuberculosis susceptibility locus on chromosome 11p13. After imputation of data from the 1000 Genomes Project into a genome-wide dataset of Ghanaian individuals with tuberculosis and controls, we identified a resistance locus on chromosome 11p13 downstream of the WT1 gene (encoding Wilms tumor 1). The strongest signal was obtained at the rs2057178 SNP ( P = 2.63 × 10 −9 ). Replication in Gambian, Indonesian and Russian tuberculosis case-control study cohorts increased the significance level for the association with this SNP to P = 2.57 × 10 −11 .