Back

Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies 126 novel loci for diverticular disease and implicates connective tissue and colonic motility

Neylan, C. J.; Levin, M. G.; Hartmann, K.; Beigel, K.; Khodursky, S.; DePaolo, J. S.; Abramowitz, S. A.; Furth, E. E.; Heuckeroth, R. O.; Damrauer, S. M.; Maguire, L. H.

2025-03-28 genetic and genomic medicine
10.1101/2025.03.27.25324777 medRxiv
Show abstract

Diverticular disease is a common and morbid complex phenotype influenced by both innate and environmental risk factors. We performed the largest genome-wide association study meta-analysis for diverticular disease, identifying 126 novel loci. Employing multiple downstream analytic strategies, including tissue and pathway enrichment, statistical fine-mapping, allele-specific expression, protein quantitative trait loci and drug-target investigations, and linkage disequilibrium score regression, we prioritized causal genes and produced several lines of evidence linking diverticular disease to connective tissue biology and colonic motility. We substantiated these findings by integrating single-cell RNA sequencing data, showing that prioritized diverticular disease-associated genes are enriched for expression in colonic smooth muscle, fibroblasts, and interstitial cells of Cajal. In quantitative analysis of surgical specimens, we found a substantial reduction in the density of elastin present in the sigmoid colon in severe diverticulitis.

Matching journals

The top 11 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.