Published in Nature Genetics: A global study involving 50 different research centres has found hundreds of genes which cause five common, hard-to-treat and debilitating inflammatory diseases, paving the way to new treatments for these conditions.
Professor Matthew Brown from the Queensland University of Technology is a co-senior author of the study, which investigated ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s Disease and ulcerative colitis (collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease), psoriasis, and primary sclerosing cholangitis.
Together these diseases affect about 3% of the world’s population. They commonly occur together in families and in individuals, and the study shows that is due to the different diseases sharing genetic risk factors, rather than one disease causing the other.
The researchers studied 86,000 subjects from 26 countries, and they identified 244 genetic variants which control whether or not people develop these conditions. A large proportion of the genetic variants were completely new findings. "For some diseases such as the common form of spinal arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, the study roughly trebled the number of genes known to be involved,” Professor Brown said in a university media release.
The finding is a major leap forward in our understanding of these common but difficult-to-treat diseases, and is pointing to several potential therapeutic targets.