• Angel C Y Mak, Marquitta J White, Walter L Eckalbar, Zachary A Szpiech, Sam S Oh, Maria Pino-Yanes, Donglei Hu, Pagé Goddard, Scott Huntsman, Joshua Galanter, Ann Chen Wu, Blanca E Himes, Soren Germer, Julia M Vogel, Karen L Bunting, Celeste Eng, Sandra Salazar, Kevin L Keys, Jennifer Liberto, Thomas J Nuckton, Thomas A Nguyen, Dara G Torgerson, Pui-Yan Kwok, Albert M Levin, Juan C Celedón, Erick Forno, Hakon Hakonarson, Patrick M Sleiman, Amber Dahlin, Kelan G Tantisira, Scott T Weiss, Denise Serebrisky, Emerita Brigino-Buenaventura, Harold J Farber, Kelley Meade, Michael A Lenoir, Pedro C Avila, Saunak Sen, Shannon M Thyne, William Rodriguez-Cintron, Cheryl A Winkler, Andrés Moreno-Estrada, Karla Sandoval, Jose R Rodriguez-Santana, Rajesh Kumar, L Keoki Williams, Nadav Ahituv, Elad Ziv, Max A Seibold, Robert B Darnell, Noah Zaitlen, Ryan D Hernandez, Esteban G Burchard, and NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium.
• 1 Department of Medicine.
• Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 2018 Jun 15; 197 (12): 155215641552-1564.

RationaleAlbuterol, a bronchodilator medication, is the first-line therapy for asthma worldwide. There are significant racial/ethnic differences in albuterol drug response.ObjectivesTo identify genetic variants important for bronchodilator drug response (BDR) in racially diverse children.MethodsWe performed the first whole-genome sequencing pharmacogenetics study from 1,441 children with asthma from the tails of the BDR distribution to identify genetic association with BDR.Measurements And Main ResultsWe identified population-specific and shared genetic variants associated with BDR, including genome-wide significant (P < 3.53 × 10-7) and suggestive (P < 7.06 × 10-6) loci near genes previously associated with lung capacity (DNAH5), immunity (NFKB1 and PLCB1), and β-adrenergic signaling (ADAMTS3 and COX18). Functional analyses of the BDR-associated SNP in NFKB1 revealed potential regulatory function in bronchial smooth muscle cells. The SNP is also an expression quantitative trait locus for a neighboring gene, SLC39A8. The lack of other asthma study populations with BDR and whole-genome sequencing data on minority children makes it impossible to perform replication of our rare variant associations. Minority underrepresentation also poses significant challenges to identify age-matched and population-matched cohorts of sufficient sample size for replication of our common variant findings.ConclusionsThe lack of minority data, despite a collaboration of eight universities and 13 individual laboratories, highlights the urgent need for a dedicated national effort to prioritize diversity in research. Our study expands the understanding of pharmacogenetic analyses in racially/ethnically diverse populations and advances the foundation for precision medicine in at-risk and understudied minority populations.

31 keywords...

hide…