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Multiple sclerosis is a complex neurological disease, with ∼20% of risk heritability attributable to common genetic variants, including >230 identified by genome-wide association studies. Multiple strands of evidence suggest that much of the remaining heritability is also due to additive effects of common variants rather than epistasis between these variants or mutations exclusive to individual families. Here, we show in 68,379 cases and controls that up to 5% of this heritability is explained by low-frequency variation in gene coding sequence. We identify four novel genes driving MS risk independently of common-variant signals, highlighting key pathogenic roles for regulatory T cell homeostasis and regulation, IFNγ biology, and NFκB signaling. As low-frequency variants do not show substantial linkage disequilibrium with other variants, and as coding variants are more interpretable and experimentally tractable than non-coding variation, our discoveries constitute a rich resource for dissecting the pathobiology of MS.

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2018.09.049

Type

Journal article

Journal

Cell

Publication Date

18/11/2018

Volume

175

Pages

1679 - 1687.e7

Keywords

International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium. Electronic address: chris.cotsapas@yale.edu, International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium