Identification of 26 novel loci that confer susceptibility to early-onset coronary artery disease in a Japanese population

Early-onset coronary artery disease (CAD) has a strong genetic component. Although genome-wide association studies have identified various genes and loci significantly associated with CAD mainly in European populations, genetic variants that contribute toward susceptibility to this condition in Japanese patients remain to be definitively identified. In the present study, exome-wide association studies (EWASs) were performed to identify genetic variants that confer susceptibility to early-onset CAD in Japanese. A total of 7,256 individuals aged ≤65 years were enrolled in the present study. EWAS were conducted on 1,482 patients with CAD and 5,774 healthy controls. Genotyping of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was performed using Illumina Human Exome-12 DNA Analysis BeadChip or Infinium Exome-24 BeadChip arrays. The association between allele frequencies for 31,465 SNPs that passed quality control and CAD was examined using Fisher's exact test. To compensate for multiple comparisons of allele frequencies with CAD, a false discovery rate (FDR) of