DLG5 variants contribute to Crohn disease risk in a Canadian population

Variants in the gene encoding the DLG5 scaffolding protein have been reported to be associated with increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and particularly Crohn's disease (Crohn disease; CD). These findings have not been uniformly replicated in follow-up studies. In this study we genotyped a cohort of 402 Canadian CD and 179 ulcerative colitis (UC) patients and 537 healthy controls for three IBD/CD-associated DLG5 variants. Our data reveal that the common DLG5 haplotype (A), which was previously considered protective for IBD, is associated with modest increases in risk for IBD (P=0.02) and CD (P=0.04). The effects of haplotype copy number on risk for IBD were minor, with the odds ratio (ORs) being 1.37 for the heterozygous risk genotype and 1.7 for the homozygous risk genotype. While we were unable to replicate the proposed association between the DLG5 c.113G>A variant and IBD, an association of IBD (P=0.02) and CD (P=0.04) with the rarer c.4136C>A variant was replicated in this cohort. These associations were restricted to the non-Jewish subjects in this cohort and were not detected in the Ashkenazi Jewish population studied here. Within the non-Jewish group, no associations were detected between the DLG5 variants and specific phenotypic features, such as site of disease, and there was no evidence of epistasis between DLG5 and any of the CD-associated CARD15 or SLC22A4/A5 gene variants. Together, the results indicate a role for DLG5 variants in IBD susceptibility and suggest that further studies are warranted to evaluate this role in different IBD populations and to determine the functional pathways that couple DLG5 variants to IBD.