Osteoarthritis susceptibility loci defined by genome scan meta-analysis

Genome scans for osteoarthritis (OA) have yielded inconsistent results. The absence of replication of linkage might be due to lack of power of individual studies. A meta-analysis of the published data was performed to assess evidence for linkage of OA across genome scan studies. Three OA whole-genome scans including 893 families with 3,000 affected individuals were used for genome scan meta-analysis (GSMA). A total of 5 bins lie above 95% confidence level (P = 0.05) and 1 bin is above 99% confidence level (P = 0.01) in OA GSMA; bins 7.6 (7q34-7q36.3, Psumrnk = 0.0035), 11.3 (11p12-11q13.4), 6.3 (6p21.1-6q15), 2.8 (2q31.1-2q34) and 15.3 (15q21.3-15q26.1). The highest summed rank was observed at bin 7.6. In conclusion, the OA GSMA has shown chromosome 7q34-7q36.3 with the highest summed rank and four additional loci with significant summed ranks across studies.