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Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified thousands of germline susceptibility loci associated with risk for cancer as well as a wide range of other traits and diseases. An interest of many investigators is identifying traits or diseases that share common susceptibility loci. We developed LDtrait (https://ldlink.nci.nih.gov/?tab=ldtrait) as an open access web tool for finding germline variation associated with multiple traits. LDtrait searches the NHGRI-EBI GWAS Catalog to identify susceptibility loci in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with a user-provided list of query variants. Options allow for modifying LD thresholds, calculating LD from a diverse set of reference populations, and downloading annotated variant lists. Results from example query searches highlight the utility of LDtrait in uncovering cross-trait associations for cancer risk and other traits. LDtrait accelerates etiologic understanding of cancer genetics by rapidly identifying genetic similarities with other traits or diseases. SIGNIFICANCE: The new GWAS search tool LDtrait will expedite discovery of shared genetic components underlying seemingly unrelated diseases and may offer novel insights into cancer research.
Lin et al. (Tue,) studied this question.