%0 Journal Article %J PLoS One %D 2021 %T Identification of novel and rare variants associated with handgrip strength using whole genome sequence data from the NHLBI Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program. %A Sarnowski, Chloe %A Chen, Han %A Biggs, Mary L %A Wassertheil-Smoller, Sylvia %A Bressler, Jan %A Irvin, Marguerite R %A Ryan, Kathleen A %A Karasik, David %A Arnett, Donna K %A Cupples, L Adrienne %A Fardo, David W %A Gogarten, Stephanie M %A Heavner, Benjamin D %A Jain, Deepti %A Kang, Hyun Min %A Kooperberg, Charles %A Mainous, Arch G %A Mitchell, Braxton D %A Morrison, Alanna C %A O'Connell, Jeffrey R %A Psaty, Bruce M %A Rice, Kenneth %A Smith, Albert V %A Vasan, Ramachandran S %A Windham, B Gwen %A Kiel, Douglas P %A Murabito, Joanne M %A Lunetta, Kathryn L %X

Handgrip strength is a widely used measure of muscle strength and a predictor of a range of morbidities including cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality. Previous genome-wide association studies of handgrip strength have focused on common variants primarily in persons of European descent. We aimed to identify rare and ancestry-specific genetic variants associated with handgrip strength by conducting whole-genome sequence association analyses using 13,552 participants from six studies representing diverse population groups from the Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program. By leveraging multiple handgrip strength measures performed in study participants over time, we increased our effective sample size by 7-12%. Single-variant analyses identified ten handgrip strength loci among African-Americans: four rare variants, five low-frequency variants, and one common variant. One significant and four suggestive genes were identified associated with handgrip strength when aggregating rare and functional variants; all associations were ancestry-specific. We additionally leveraged the different ancestries available in the UK Biobank to further explore the ancestry-specific association signals from the single-variant association analyses. In conclusion, our study identified 11 new loci associated with handgrip strength with rare and/or ancestry-specific genetic variations, highlighting the added value of whole-genome sequencing in diverse samples. Several of the associations identified using single-variant or aggregate analyses lie in genes with a function relevant to the brain or muscle or were reported to be associated with muscle or age-related traits. Further studies in samples with sequence data and diverse ancestries are needed to confirm these findings.

%B PLoS One %V 16 %P e0253611 %8 2021 %G eng %N 7 %R 10.1371/journal.pone.0253611