Genome-wide association analysis of susceptibility and clinical phenotype in multiple sclerosis.
Baranzini SE, Wang J, Gibson RA et al.
The influence of genes on the course of multiple sclerosis (MS) has been considered; however, the observation that the clinical expression of MS can be different even in monozygotic twins suggests that this is a very complex issue. In order to identify common variants associated with MS risk and phenotype, the authors performed a genomic-wide association study, and genotyped 978 cases of MS and 883 controls. Genotypic influences on susceptibility, age of onset, disease severity, brain lesion load, and normalized brain volume were assessed. As expected, the strongest association was located in the major histocompatibility complex region in chromosome 6.