Genetics

This post covers Loomis and colleagues' 2023 Scientific Reports study, the first GWAS meta-analysis of longitudinal brain MRI measures of MS progression across six randomized trials from Biogen and Roche/Genentech. It follows the design choice to use imaging rather than EDSS, the two peaks at PTPRD for brain volume change and NEDD4L for T2 lesion volume change, the colocalization result that gives NEDD4L a usable direction, brain cell-type expression for both genes, the four separate tests showing no overlap with MS susceptibility genetics or with the IMSGC severity locus, and the authors' own limitations and next steps.