Association of rare PPARGC1A variants with Parkinson's disease risk.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Recent researches on Parkinson's disease (PD) pathogenesis discovered the correlation between PD and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) dysfunction and reduction of PPARGC1A gene expression. Hence, we detected PPARGC1A rare variants to clarify their effect on PD risk in a large population of PD patients in mainland China. METHODS: We applied whole-exome sequencing (WES) to 1917 patients with early-onset or familial PD and 1652 controls (WES cohort), and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to 1962 patients with sporadic late-onset PD and 1279 controls (WGS cohort). To identify PPARGC1A rare variants, we used burden analysis to assess the relationship between PPARGC1A rare variants and PD susceptibility. RESULTS: 30 rare missense variants in the cohort WES and 21 missense variants in the cohort WGS have been detected in the study and PPARGC1A missense variants are significantly associated with early-onset and familial PD susceptibility in our study (P = 0.012), which supports evidence that PPARGC1A rare variants are involved in the onset of early-onset and familial PD. CONCLUSIONS: The study suggested that PPARGC1A rare variants may contribute to the risk of early-onset and familial PD.