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SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE · MED

Genome-wide association and population-tailored polygenic risk for Parkinson's disease in Taiwan.

NPJ Parkinsons Dis · 2026-05-22

DOI: 10.1038/s41531-026-01349-0PMID: 42168222

Open accessresearch-article; Journal ArticleOriginal source ↗

Research overview

The text below is the source article’s original abstract under a verified reuse license. cc by

Genetic risk factors for Parkinson's disease (PD) remain under-characterized in East Asian populations. We assembled a Taiwanese case-control cohort (2245 PD; 2147 controls), genotyped participants using the Illumina NeuroBooster Array, and imputed 7.6 million variants with the Taiwan Biobank reference panel. Logistic-regression GWAS identified genome-wide significant associations at SNCA and MCCC1, with the lead SNCA signal located in intron 4; conditional and joint analyses suggested an additional 5' SNCA component. We observed suggestive associations at GCH1, PPARGC1A, and GALNT13. Locus-focused haplotype analyses refined the SNCA signal, delineating an East Asian-enriched risk haplotype, and confirmed risk effects of LRRK2 p.G2385R and p.R1628P, including evidence consistent with a gene-dosage effect. A European-derived PRS showed modest discrimination in our cohort (AUC 0.59), while incorporating East Asian and Taiwan-relevant variants improved performance (AUC 0.62). Together, these results define the genetic architecture of PD in Taiwan, highlight shared and population-enriched risk components, and support ancestry-aware PRS construction for improved risk stratification.

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