GLRB variants regulate nearby gene expression in human brain tissues.

A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified four genetic variants rs78726293, rs191260602, rs17035816 and rs7688285 in GLRB gene to be associated with panic disorder (PD) risk. In fact, GWAS is an important first step to investigate the genetics of human complex diseases. In order to translate into opportunities for new diagnostics and therapies, we must identify the genes perturbed by these four variants, and understand how these variant functionally contributes to the underlying disease pathogenesis. Here, we investigated the effect of these four genetic variants and the expression of three nearby genes including PDGFC, GLRB and GRIA2 in human brain tissues using the GTEx (version 6) and Braineac eQTLs datasets. In GTEx (version 6) dataset, the results showed that both rs17035816 and rs7688285 variants could significantly regulate PDGFC and GLRB gene expression. In Braineac dataset, the results showed that rs17035816 variant could significantly regulate GLRB and GRIA2 gene expression. We believe that these findings further provide important supplementary information about the regulating mechanisms of rs17035816 and rs7688285 variants in PD risk.