Counting the number of times a string of letters appears in the genome could bring us closer to predicting kidney failure, suggests an international team of researchers. They found that fewer copies of a gene which produces an important defense protein [that] increases a person’s risk of developing a common form of kidney inflammation.
The findings could help explain why Chinese people are more susceptible to the condition known as immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN),…[which] is a leading cause of kidney disease in this population.
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“The contribution of this locus to the IgAN risk equals the sum of all the other genetic risk factors that have been discovered so far,” says [Jianjun Liu, who led the study at the A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore]. He and his team wanted to explore this region further by quantifying patterns of repetition…in a specific gene called DEFA1A3. The number of times a gene repeats can influence disease development and progression.
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They found that the IgAN patients had significantly fewer repetitions of the DEFA1A3 gene, which was associated with an increased risk of developing the disease.
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