The European GWAS-identified risk SNP rs457717 within IQGAP2 is not associated with age-related hearing impairment in Han male Chinese population

Abstract

This study aimed to test the association between the European GWAS-identified risk IQGAP2 SNP rs457717 (A>G) and age-related hearing impairment (ARHI) in a Han male Chinese (HMC) population. A total of 2420 HMC subjects were divided into two groups [group 70+: >70 years (n = 1306), and group 70-: ≤70 years (n = 1114)]. The participants were categorised into case and control groups according to Z high scores for group 70- and the severity of hearing loss and different audiogram shapes identified by K-means cluster analysis for group 70+. The IQGAP2 tagSNP rs457717 was genotyped in accordance with the different ARHI phenotypes. The genotype distributions of IQGAP2 (AA/AG/GG) were not significantly different between the case and control groups (P = 0.613 for group 70-; P = 0.602 for group 70+). Compared with genotype AA, the ORs of genotypes AG and GG for ARHI were not significantly different following adjustment for other environmental risk factors. We demonstrated that the IQGAP2 TagSNP rs457717 (A/G) was not associated with ARHI in HMC individuals.

Self-reported hearing loss questions provide a good measure for genetic studies: a polygenic risk score analysis from UK Biobank

“…It is generally accepted that cross-population PRS is not a powerful approach and a comprehensive review of PRS published from 2008 to 2017 demonstrated this [ 31 ]. Furthermore, a previous attempt to replicate a SNP identified on a hearing loss GWAS of Europeans in a Han-Chinese sample was also unsuccessful [ 32 ]. That said, within the same Northern European (TwinsUK) or similar European populations, prediction was robust and we include the other populations for completeness, to add to the literature that cross-population prediction is not particularly useful.…”

Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies five novel loci for age-related hearing impairment

“…Second, the Finnish study was performed in an isolated population of the Saami using a small sample, so results may not be pertinent to the outbred Northern European sample of our work. Similarly, a study in a Han Chinese male sample investigating the relationship between IQGAP2 and ARHI did not show any significant association 46 .…”