This exciting progress has provided major pathogenic insights.
The last 4 years have seen tremendous progress in the identification of Inflammatory bowel disease susceptibility genes.
Using genome wide association scans (GWAS) 99 IBD risk loci have been identified including at least 30 association signals shared between Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The UK and international IBD Genetics consortia have been central to these discovery efforts.
This exciting progress has provided major pathogenic insights but unfortunately has not yet translated to the clinic for patient benefit.
Figure 1. IBD susceptibility loci (circa Feb 2011) :
The loci (depicted by lead gene name) attaining genome-wide significance (P<5×10-8) are shown for Crohn’s disease (red), ulcerative colitis (blue) and IBD (black where p<5×10-8 in CD and UC; red where p<5×10-8 in CD and <5×10-4 in UC; blue where p<5×10-8 in UC and <5×10-4 in CD).