Genetic associations of the non-MHC region with systemic sclerosis in a Han Chinese population

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a complex autoimmune disease with unknown etiology and genetic factors contribute significantly to its pathogenesis. Several studies have identified multiple SSc-susceptible genes while the majority of them were discovered mainly in Caucasians. Recent studies have revealed significant genetic differences between different ethnicities, illustrating the importance of cross-ethnicity validation of candidate SNPs in SSc patients other than Caucasians. In this study, we recruited 1,059 SSc patients and 1,951 matched controls to validate the associations of those reported non-MHC polymorphisms in a Han Chinese population. We searched for the SNPs associated with SSc in the studies published from 2004 to 2019 through Google Scholar and PubMed with the keywords “systemic sclerosis” and “genetics”. In total, 101 SNPs were remained for validation.