ences and Gerontology Research Centre, University of Jyva Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, 40 National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland, 41 Institute of Health Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, 42 Biocenter Oulu, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, 43 MRC Centre for Causal Analyses in Translational Epidemiology, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, 44 Department of Respiratory Medicine, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia, 45 Schools of Population Health and Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia, 46 MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, 47 SpiroMeta Consortium, Nottingham, Leicester, United Kingdom Abstract Rationale: Lung function measures are heritable traits that predict population morbidity and mortality and are essential for the diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Variations in many genes have been reported to affect these traits, but attempts at replication have provided conflicting results. Recently, we undertook a meta-analysis of Genome Wide Association Study results for lung function measures in 20,288 individuals from the general population. 1 May 2011 | Volume 6 | Issue 5 | e19382 Candidate Genes Evaluation in SpiroMeta Objectives: To comprehensively analyse previously reported genetic associations with lung function measures, and to investigate whether single nucleotide polymorphisms in these genomic regions are associated with lung function in a large 9671117 population sample. Methods: We analysed association for SNPs tagging 130 genes and 48 intergenic regions, after conducting a systematic review of the literature in the PubMed database for genetic association studies reporting lung function associations. Results: The analysis included 16,936 genotyped and imputed SNPs. No loci showed overall significant association for FEV1 or FEV1/FVC traits using a carefully defined significance threshold of 1.361025. The most significant loci associated with FEV1 include SNPs tagging MACROD2, CNTN5, and TRPV4. Among eversmokers, SERPINA1 showed the most significant association with FEV1, MedChemExpress LY2109761 followed by 
PDE4D. The strongest association with FEV1/FVC ratio was observed with ABCC1, and ESR1 among ever-smokers. Conclusions: Polymorphisms spanning previously associated lung function genes did not show strong evidence for association with lung function measures in the SpiroMeta consortium population. Common SERPINA1 polymorphisms may affect FEV1 among smokers in the general population. Citation: Obeidat M, Wain LV, Shrine N, Kalsheker N, 16785762 Artigas MS, et al. A Comprehensive Evaluation of Potential Lung Function Associated Genes in the SpiroMeta General Population Sample. PLoS ONE 6: e19382. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019382 Editor: Malcolm Gracie Semple, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom Received February 11, 2011; Accepted March 28, 2011; Published May 20, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Obeidat et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Cohort funding: ALSPAC: The UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. B58C – WTCCC:
