LAUSR

OBJECTIVES To identify genetic variants and polygenic risk score (PRS) relating to female gout and asymptomatic hyperuricemia (AH) in a genome-wide association study (GWAS). METHODS Gout, AH and normouricemia controls were included from Taiwan biobank and China Medical University Hospital. All participants were divided into discovery and replication cohorts for GWAS. PRS was estimated according to whether the variant exhibited a protective effect on the phenotypes or not. Each cohort was separated into two groups by age of 50 years old. RESULTS A total of 59 472 females were enrolled, and gout and AH occupied 1.60% and 19.59%, respectively. Six variants located in genes SLC2A9, C5orf22, CNTNAP2, and GLRX5 were significantly predictors of female gout in those aged > =50. For those aged <50 years old, only the variant rs147750368 (SPANXN1) on chromosome X was found. Most variants located in genes SLC2A9, ZNF518B, PKD2 and ABCG2 were found to be significantly related to AH in both age groups. The PRS could explain ∼0.59% - 0.89% of variance of gout in variants with protective effects, which showed 6.2 times of mean PRS in the risk variants, but only 1.2 times in AH phenotype. Moreover, the PRS also revealed a dose-response trend between AH rates and quartile scores. CONCLUSION The variants in gene SLC2A9 are the major genetic factors for females associated with gout in those aged > = 50. PRS can provide more robust prediction of the gout/AH under homogeneous selection of variants which show effects on the traits.