Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) are efficacious in the treatment of asthma, which affects more than 300 million people in the world. While genome-wide association studies have identified genes involved in differential treatment responses to ICS in asthma, few studies have evaluated the effects of combined rare and common variants on ICS response among children with asthma. Among children with asthma treated with ICS with whole exome sequencing (WES) data in the PrecisionLink Biobank (91 White and 20 Black children), we examined the effect and contribution of rare and common variants with hospitalizations or emergency department visits. For 12 regions previously associated with asthma and ICS response (DPP10, FBXL7, NDFIP1, TBXT, GLCCI1, HDAC9, TBXAS1, STAT6, GSDMB/ORMDL3, CRHR1, GNGT2, FCER2), we used the combined sum test for the sequence kernel association test (SKAT) adjusting for age, sex, and BMI and stratified by race. Validation was conducted in the Biorepository and Integrative Genomics (BIG) Initiative (83 White and 134 Black children). Using a Bonferroni threshold for the 12 regions tested (i.e., 0.05/12 = 0.004), GSDMB/ORMDL3 was significantly associated with ICS response for the combined effect of rare and common variants (p-value = 0.003) among White children in the PrecisionLink Biobank and replicated in the BIG Initiative (p-value = 0.02). Using WES data, the combined effect of rare and common variants for GSDMB/ORMDL3 was associated with ICS response among asthmatic children in the PrecisionLink Biobank and replicated in the BIG Initiative. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the power of biobanks of pediatric real-life populations in asthma genomic investigations.
Keywords: GSDMB/ORMDL3; asthma; biobank; children; inhaled corticosteroid.