Identification of shared genetic susceptibility loci for sarcoidosis and tuberculosis

Sarcoidosis and tuberculosis are both complex granulomatous diseases, which mainly affect the lung. The inflammatory processes in the diseases are very similar, suggesting a common etiopathology and most probably also a shared genetic background. In order to identify such shared genetic factors, a combined dataset with imputed Affymetrix 6.0 genome-wide genotype data of a German sarcoidosis cohort and a Ghanaian tuberculosis cohort was analyzed for association. Four different statistical approaches were used to build hypotheses on associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), leading to the selection of 53…