A GWAS for Aneurysm

A group of researchers reports in the American Journal of Human Genetics on a genome-wide association study of abdominal aortic aneurysm. For the discovery phase, they looked at 1,866 people with abdominal aortic aneurysm and 5,435 controls, and followed up their nine leads in 2,871 additional cases and 32,687 controls and then in an additional 1,491 cases and 11,060 controls. From this they linked a variant in the low-density-lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 gene with risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm. "This gives us a target to look at to work out what causes these aneurysms to grow. If we can do that, we can hopefully find ways to stop them growing and prevent people from needing operations," lead author Matthew Bown from the University of Leicester tells the Guardian.