Genome-Wide Association Study in Asians Identifies Novel Loci for High Myopia and Highlights a Nervous System Role in Its Pathogenesis.

To identify novel susceptibility loci for high myopia. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) followed by replication and meta-analysis. A total of 14 096 samples from East and Southeast Asian populations (2549 patients with high myopia and 11 547 healthy controls). We performed a GWAS in 3269 Japanese individuals (1668 with high myopia and 1601 control participants), followed by replication analysis in a total of 10 827 additional samples (881 with high myopia and 9946 control participants) from Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. To confirm the biological role of the identified loci in the pathogenesis of high myopia, we performed functional annotation and Gene Ontology (GO) analyses. We evaluated the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms with high myopia and GO terms enriched among genes identified in the current study. We identified 9 loci with genome-wide significance (P < 5.0 × 10 The current study identified 6 novel loci associated with high myopia and demonstrated an important role of the nervous system in the disease pathogenesis. Our findings give new insight into the genetic factors underlying myopia, including high myopia, by connecting previous findings and allowing for a clarified interpretation of the cause and pathophysiologic features of myopia at the molecular level.

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