Replication of association between FAM167A(C8orf13)-BLK region and rheumatoid arthritis in a Japanese population

Polymorphisms in the genomic region encoding B lymphoid tyrosine kinase ( BLK ) and family with sequence similarity 167, member A ( FAM167A , also referred to as C8orf13 ) at 8p23.1 have been associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in Caucasian1 2 and Asian3 4 populations. A recent genome-wide study in a north American population showed new associations with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), among which was a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs2736340 in the intergenic region of BLK and FAM167A .5 In the HapMap Japanese samples (http://www.hapmap.org/index.html.ja), this SNP is in absolute linkage disequilibrium ( r 2=1) with rs13277113, previously associated with SLE.1,–,4 We have shown that the population frequency of the risk genotype rs13277113A/A and the OR for SLE …