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Genome-wide Polygenic Burden of Rare Deleterious Variants in Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy

Leu, C; Balestrini, S; Maher, B; Hernández-Hernández, L; Gormley, P; Hämäläinen, E; Heggeli, K; ... Sisodiya, SM; + view all (2015) Genome-wide Polygenic Burden of Rare Deleterious Variants in Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy. EBioMedicine , 2 (9) pp. 1063-1070. 10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.07.005. Green open access

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Abstract

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) represents the most severe degree of the spectrum of epilepsy severity and is the commonest cause of epilepsy-related premature mortality. The precise pathophysiology and the genetic architecture of SUDEP remain elusive. Aiming to elucidate the genetic basis of SUDEP, we analysed rare, protein-changing variants from whole-exome sequences of 18 people who died of SUDEP, 87 living people with epilepsy and 1479 non-epilepsy disease controls. Association analysis revealed a significantly increased genome-wide polygenic burden per individual in the SUDEP cohort when compared to epilepsy (P = 5.7 × 10(- 3)) and non-epilepsy disease controls (P = 1.2 × 10(- 3)). The polygenic burden was driven both by the number of variants per individual, and over-representation of variants likely to be deleterious in the SUDEP cohort. As determined by this study, more than a thousand genes contribute to the observed polygenic burden within the framework of this study. Subsequent gene-based association analysis revealed five possible candidate genes significantly associated with SUDEP or epilepsy, but no one single gene emerges as common to the SUDEP cases. Our findings provide further evidence for a genetic susceptibility to SUDEP, and suggest an extensive polygenic contribution to SUDEP causation. Thus, an overall increased burden of deleterious variants in a highly polygenic background might be important in rendering a given individual more susceptible to SUDEP. Our findings suggest that exome sequencing in people with epilepsy might eventually contribute to generating SUDEP risk estimates, promoting stratified medicine in epilepsy, with the eventual aim of reducing an individual patient's risk of SUDEP.

Type: Article
Title: Genome-wide Polygenic Burden of Rare Deleterious Variants in Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy
Location: Netherlands
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.07.005
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.07.005
Language: English
Additional information: © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: AED, anti-epileptic drug, Association, Burden, Death, Epilepsy, MAF, minor allele frequency, Mortality, QC, quality control, SUDEP, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, Severity, WES, whole-exome sequencing, n, number
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Developmental Neurosciences Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1474428
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