| Affiliation: | 1. Reta Lila Weston Laboratories and Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK;2. Laboratory of Neurogenetics, Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Thessaly, Larissa, Greece;3. Department of Neurology, Papageorgiou Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece;4. Department of Neurology, Medical School, University of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, Greece;5. General Hospital of Syros, Syros, Greece;6. ‘Hygeia’ Hospital, Clinic of Neurodegenerative Disorders, Athens, Greece;g Second Department of Neurology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, Athens, Greece;h Neurogenetics Unit, 1st Department of Neurology, University of Athens Medical School, Eginition Hospital, Athens, Greece;i Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD, USA;j Department of General Biology, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR-54124, Thessaloniki, Greece;k Third Department of Neurology, G. Papanikolaou Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece;l Department of Biological Anthropology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA;m Division of Basic Neurosciences, Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece |
| Abstract: | Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been shown to be a powerful approach to identify risk loci for neurodegenerative diseases. Recent GWAS in Parkinson's disease (PD) have been successful in identifying numerous risk variants pointing to novel pathways potentially implicated in the pathogenesis of PD. Contributing to these GWAS efforts, we performed genotyping of previously identified risk alleles in PD patients and control subjects from Greece. We showed that previously published risk profiles for Northern European and American populations are also applicable to the Greek population. In addition, although our study was largely underpowered to detect individual associations, we replicated 5 of 32 previously published risk variants with nominal p values <0.05. Genome-wide complex trait analysis revealed that known risk loci explain disease risk in 1.27% of Greek PD patients. Collectively, these results indicate that there is likely a substantial genetic component to PD in Greece, similarly to other worldwide populations, that remains to be discovered. |
