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ABO blood type B and fucosyltransferase 2 non-secretor status as genetic risk factors for chronic pancreatitis
  1. Frank Ulrich Weiss1,
  2. Claudia Schurmann2,3,
  3. Alexander Teumer2,4,
  4. Julia Mayerle1,
  5. Peter Simon1,
  6. Henry Völzke4,
  7. Andreas Greinacher5,
  8. Jens-Peter Kuehn6,
  9. Martin Zenker7,
  10. Uwe Völker2,
  11. Georg Homuth2,
  12. Markus M Lerch1
  1. 1Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  2. 2Department of Functional Genomics, Interfaculty Institute for Genetics and Functional Genomics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  3. 3Genetics of Obesity & Related Metabolic Traits Program, The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA
  4. 4Institute for Community Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  5. 5Department of Transfusion Medicine, Institute of Immunology and Transfusion Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  6. 6Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Neuroradiology, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  7. 7Institute of Human Genetics, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, University Hospital Magdeburg, Germany
  1. Correspondence to Professor Dr Markus M Lerch, Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Ferdinand-Sauerbruch-Str., Greifswald 17487, Germany; lerch{at}uni-greifswald.de

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Sir,

We thank Kirsten et al1 for their comments on our recent study,2 in which we reported a genome-wide analysis on ∼4000 volunteers from the population-based Study of Health in Pommerania (SHIP) cohort3 with replication in 1444 blood donors. We had found a significant association between higher serum lipase activities and three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) as well as the fucosyltransferase-2 (FUT2) non-secretor status (homozygosity for the FUT2 p.W134X mutation) and the ABO blood type B (figure 1). In more than 1000 patients with pancreatitis, we confirmed that FUT2 non-secretor status and blood type B are also disease risk factors, with a greater than twofold OR for blood type B compared with blood type O.

Figure 1

Distribution of ABO blood types in blood donor subgroups with increasing mean serum lipase activity. One thousand four hundred and forty-four blood donors were stratified into subgroups (cohort size in brackets) of increasing serum …

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Footnotes

  • Contributors FUW and MML wrote the manuscript. CS, AT, JM, PS, HV, AG, J-PK, MZ, UV and GH contributed and approved the final letter.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent Obtained.

  • Ethics approval Local ethic review commitee.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.