A meta-analysis has identified two genes as susceptibility loci for venous thromboembolism, according to Marine Germain of the Institute for Cardiometabolism and Nutrition, Paris, and associates.
The identified risk loci were TSPAN15 and SLC44A2, with the odds ratios for VTE at 1.31 and 1.21, respectively. The most significant single-nucleotide polymorphism for the TSPAN15 loci was the intronic rs78707713; for SLC44A2, the most significant SNP was the nonsynonymous rs2288904, with ORs of 1.42 and 1.28, respectively. Although these associations are not strong, statistical evidence was much more convincing in the discovery and replication stages, the researchers reported.
“The identified VTE-associated SNPs map to genes that are not in conventional pathways to thrombosis that have marked most of the genetic associations to date, suggesting that these genetic variants represent novel biological pathways leading to VTE,” the investigators wrote.
Find the full study in the American Journal of Human Genetics (2015 April 2 [doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.01.019]).
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