Mineo Ozaki, Marcelo T. Nicolela, Theofanis Pappas, Fotis Topouzis, Andrés Fernández-Vega Cueto, Panayiota Founti, Eray Atalay, Nilgun Yildirim, Chie Sotozono, Christina Keskini, Yosai Mori, Luis Fernández-Vega Cueto, Andrew C. Orr, Murat Irkec, Yuanhan Li, Deepak P. Edward, Satoko Nakano, Yury S. Astakhov, Tsutomu Ohashi, Daniel Gaston, George Chichua, Evangelia S Panagiotou, Ursula Schlötzer-Schrehardt, Jae H. Kang, Sergo Tabagari, Federico Martinón-Torres, Akitoshi Yoshida, Lesya M. Shuba, Masaru Inatani, Ken Hayashi, Takako Sugimoto, Shamira A. Perera, Takanori Mizoguchi, Kar Seng Sim, Friedrich E. Kruse, Shin-ichi Manabe, Andreas Giessl, Joseph Saunders, Ewa Kosior-Jarecka, Christian Y. Mardin, Wai Leong Tam, Hui Meng Soo, Makoto Aihara, Yoshiaki Kiuchi, Tomomi Higashide, Wee Yang Meah, Rahat Husain, Tin Aung, Sergei Y. Astakhov, Zheng Li, Dimitrios G. Mikropoulos, André Reis, Eleftherios Anastasopoulos, Jessica N. Cooke Bailey, Anastasios G. P. Konstas, Toshiya Sakurai, Dilek Aktas, Montserrat García, Bilge Batu, Hideki Chuman, Shigeru Kinoshita, Matthias Zenkel, Ying Swan Ho, Nevbahar Tamçelik, Masakazu Nakano, Jonathan L. Haines, Nino Kobakhidze, Kazuhiko Mori, Esther Kai Lay Peh, Francesca Pasutto, Georg Mossböck, Anthi Chatzikyriakidou, Robert P. Igo, Etsuo Chihara, Kazuhisa Sugiyama, Janey L. Wiggs, Michael V. Dubina, Shuwen Chen, Paul E Rafuse, Xiao Yin Chen, Trevor R. Carmichael, Kei Tashiro, Miguel Coca-Prados, Claus Hellerbrand, Shigeyasu Kazama, Çilingir Oguz, Alexandros Lambropoulos, Patrick Tan, Michael A. Hauser, Burcu Kasım, Michèle Ramsay, Morio Ueno, Kana Tokumo, Kenji Inoue, Robert Ritch, Tomasz Zarnowski, Toshiaki Kubota, Sonia Davila, Steffen Heegaard, Ryuichi Ideta, Lydia Álvarez, Yoko Ikeda, Chiea Chuen Khor, Susan Williams, Satoshi Ishiko, Louis R. Pasquale, Eugeny L. Akopov, Antonio Salas, Alina Popa-Cherecheanu, Monisha E. Nongpiur, Héctor González-Iglesias, Urszula Lukasik, Jia Nee Foo, Augustine Cheong, Zhenxun Wang, Mei Chin Lee, Anita Chan, and Kazunori Miyata
IMPORTANCE Exfoliation syndrome is a systemic disorder characterized by progressive accumulation of abnormal fibrillar protein aggregates manifesting clinically in the anterior chamber of the eye. This disorder is the most commonly known cause of glaucoma and a major cause of irreversible blindness. OBJECTIVE To determine if exfoliation syndrome is associated with rare, protein-changing variants predicted to impair protein function. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A 2-stage, case-control, whole-exome sequencing association study with a discovery cohort and 2 independently ascertained validation cohorts. Study participants from 14 countries were enrolled between February 1999 and December 2019. The date of last clinical follow-up was December 2019. Affected individuals had exfoliation material on anterior segment structures of at least 1 eye as visualized by slit lamp examination. Unaffected individuals had no signs of exfoliation syndrome. EXPOSURES Rare, coding-sequence genetic variants predicted to be damaging by bioinformatic algorithms trained to recognize alterations that impair protein function. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was the presence of exfoliation syndrome. Exome-wide significance for detected variants was defined as P < 2.5 x 10(-6). The secondary outcomes included biochemical enzymatic assays and gene expression analyses. RESULTS The discovery cohort included 4028 participants with exfoliation syndrome (median age, 78 years [interquartile range, 73-83 years]; 2377 [59.0%] women) and 5638 participants without exfoliation syndrome (median age, 72 years [interquartile range, 65-78 years]; 3159 [56.0%] women). In the discovery cohort, persons with exfoliation syndrome, compared with those without exfoliation syndrome, were significantly more likely to carry damaging CYP39A1 variants (1.3% vs 0.30%, respectively; odds ratio, 3.55 [95% CI, 2.07-6.10]; P = 6.1 x 10(-7). This outcome was validated in 2 independent cohorts. The first validation cohort included 2337 individuals with exfoliation syndrome (median age, 74 years; 1132 women; n = 1934 with demographic data) and 2813 individuals without exfoliation syndrome (median age, 72 years; 1287 women; n = 2421 with demographic data). The second validation cohort included 1663 individuals with exfoliation syndrome (median age, 75 years; 587 women; n = 1064 with demographic data) and 3962 individuals without exfoliation syndrome (median age, 74 years; 951 women; n = 1555 with demographic data). Of the individuals from both validation cohorts, 5.2% with exfoliation syndrome carried CYP39A1 damaging alleles vs 3.1% without exfoliation syndrome (odds ratio, 1.82 [95% CI, 1.47-2.26]; P < .001). Biochemical assays classified 34 of 42 damaging CYP39A1 alleles as functionally deficient (median reduction in enzymatic activity compared with wild-type CYP39A1, 94.4%[interquartile range, 78.7%-98.2%] for the 34 deficient variants). CYP39A1 transcript expression was 47% lower (95% CI, 30%-64% lower; P < .001) in ciliary body tissues from individuals with exfoliation syndrome compared with individuals without exfoliation syndrome. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this whole-exome sequencing case-control study, presence of exfoliation syndrome was significantly associated with carriage of functionally deficient CYP39A1 sequence variants. Further research is needed to understand the clinical implications of these findings. National Research Foundation of SingaporeNational Research Foundation, Singapore [NRF-NRFI2018-01]; US National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health [R01 EY020928, P30 EY014104, UM1 CA186107, U01 CA167552, EY015473]; Glaucoma Research Foundation of Canada [X052, CIRG17may053]; National Medical Research Council of SingaporeNational Medical Research Council, Singapore The study was funded by grant NRF-NRFI2018-01 from the National Research Foundation of Singapore. Additional support was provided by grants R01 EY020928, P30 EY014104, UM1 CA186107, U01 CA167552, and EY015473 from the US National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health, funding from the Glaucoma Research Foundation of Canada, and grants X052 and CIRG17may053 from the National Medical Research Council of Singapore.