Evaluation of 12 GWAS-drawn SNPs as biomarkers of rheumatoid arthritis response to TNF inhibitors. A potential SNP association with response to etanercept

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 28;14(2):e0213073. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213073. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Research in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is increasingly focused on the discovery of biomarkers that could enable personalized treatments. The genetic biomarkers associated with the response to TNF inhibitors (TNFi) are among the most studied. They include 12 SNPs exhibiting promising results in the three largest genome-wide association studies (GWAS). However, they still require further validation. With this aim, we assessed their association with response to TNFi in a replication study, and a meta-analysis summarizing all non-redundant data. The replication involved 755 patients with RA that were treated for the first time with a biologic drug, which was either infliximab (n = 397), etanercept (n = 155) or adalimumab (n = 203). Their DNA samples were successfully genotyped with a single-base extension multiplex method. Lamentably, none of the 12 SNPs was associated with response to the TNFi in the replication study (p > 0.05). However, a drug-stratified exploratory analysis revealed a significant association of the NUBPL rs2378945 SNP with a poor response to etanercept (B = -0.50, 95% CI = -0.82, -0.17, p = 0.003). In addition, the meta-analysis reinforced the previous association of three SNPs: rs2378945, rs12142623, and rs4651370. In contrast, five of the remaining SNPs were less associated than before, and the other four SNPs were no longer associated with the response to treatment. In summary, our results highlight the complexity of the pharmacogenetics of TNFi in RA showing that it could involve a drug-specific component and clarifying the status of the 12 GWAS-drawn SNPs.

Publication types

  • Meta-Analysis
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Antirheumatic Agents / therapeutic use
  • Arthritis, Rheumatoid / drug therapy*
  • Arthritis, Rheumatoid / genetics*
  • Etanercept / therapeutic use*
  • Female
  • Genetic Markers
  • Genome-Wide Association Study
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Pharmacogenomic Testing
  • Pharmacogenomic Variants
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide*
  • Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha / antagonists & inhibitors*
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • Antirheumatic Agents
  • Genetic Markers
  • TNF protein, human
  • Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha
  • Etanercept

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII, Spain) through grants PI14/01651, PI17/01606 and RD16/0012/0014 to AG and PI12/01909 to JJG-R. These grants are partially financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the EU (FEDER). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.