A Genome-Wide Association Study to Identify Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms for Acute Kidney Injury

Rationale: Acute kidney injury is a common and severe complication of critical illness and cardiac surgery. Despite significant attempts at developing treatments, therapeutic advances to attenuate acute kidney injury and expedite recovery have largely failed.Objectives: Identifying genetic loci associated with increased risk of acute kidney injury may reveal novel pathways for therapeutic development.Methods: We conducted an exploratory genome-wide association study to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with genetic susceptibility to in-hospital acute kidney injury.Measurements and Main Results: We genotyped 609,508 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and performed genotype imputation in 760 acute kidney injury cases and 669 controls. We then evaluated polymorphisms that showed the strongest association with acute kidney injury in a replication patient population containing 206 cases with 1,406 controls. We observed an association between acute kidney injury and four single-nucleotide polymor...