Evaluation of genetic loci influencing adult height in the Japanese population

Adult height is a highly heritable, classic polygenic trait. The recent advent of genome-wide association studies has led to the identification of robust association at common variants influencing the normal variation of height; the number of loci has now risen to 50. The present study tested the potential overlap of height associations at 46 loci that were previously reported in European-descent populations with those among 1530 Japanese subjects and also attempted to replicate the suggestive association signals that were previously reported in East Asians alone. We found a total of 20 independent loci to be significantly (P<0.05) associated with height among the Japanese subjects (N <= 6814); 19 loci were originally identified in Europeans and the remaining 1 locus (ZFAT) was previously reported in Koreans (P=3.8x10(-9) with the Japanese and Korean data combined for ZFAT). Although 41% (19 of 46) of the loci were nominally replicated, a higher proportion of the tested loci seemed to overlap between the Japanese and Europeans; 83% (38 of 46) of the loci showed a concordant direction of association between the two ethnic groups. Despite the substantial inter-population overlap observed in the present study, further investigation is warranted to search for loci with enhanced genetic impacts in East Asians than in Europeans. Journal of Human Genetics (2009) 54, 749-752; doi: 10.1038/jhg.2009.99; published online 16 October 2009