LAUSR

Large-scale meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies have identified that polymorphisms ACMSD/TMEM163 rs6430538, GPNMB rs199347 and BCKDK /STX1B rs14235 to be the risk loci for Parkinson's disease (PD) in a Caucasian population. However, the role of these three polymorphisms in a Han Chinese population from mainland China still remains to be clarified. We conducted a large sample study to examine genetic associations of rs6430538, rs199347 and rs14235 with PD in a Han Chinese population of 989 sporadic PD patients and 1058 healthy controls. All subjects were genotyped for these loci using the Sequenom iPLEX Assay. In addition, we conducted further stratified analysis according to age at onset and compared the clinical characteristics between minor allele carriers and non-carriers for each locus. However, no significant differences were found in genotype and allele frequency distribution between PD patients and controls for the three loci, even after being stratified by age at onset. Moreover, we demonstrated that minor allele carriers cannot be distinguished from non-carriers based on their clinical features. Our study is the first to demonstrate that ACMSD/TMEM163 rs6430538, GPNMB rs199347 and BCKDK /STX1B rs14235 do not confer a significant risk for sporadic PD in mainland China. Therefore, more replication studies in additional Chinese population and other cohorts and functional studies are warranted to further clarify the role of the three loci in PD susceptibility.