Genome-wide association study of IgG1 responses to the choline-binding protein PspC of Streptococcus pneumoniae

Streptococcus pneumoniae causes invasive pneumococcal disease. Delayed development of antibodies to S. pneumoniae in infancy is associated with the development of atopy and asthma. Pneumococcal surface protein C (PspC) is a vaccine candidate and variation in its choline-binding region is associated with invasive disease. This study examined 523 060 single-nucleotide polymorphisms in The Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study to find loci influencing immunoglobulin G1 (IgG1) responses to PspC measured at age 14 years (n=1152). Genome-wide significance (top SNP rs9275596; P=3.1 × 10-14) was only observed at human leucocyte antigen (HLA). Imputed HLA amino-acid polymorphisms showed the strongest associations at positions DRB1 47 (P=3.2 × 10-11), 13SRG (P=9.8 × 10-10) and 11SP (P=9.8 × 10-10), and at DQA1 34 (P=6.4 × 10-10), DQB1 167R (P=9.3 × 10-6) and HLA-B 95 W (P=1.2 × 10-9). Conditional analyses showed independent contributions from DRB1 47 and DQB1 167R to the signal at rs9275596, supported by an omnibus test showing a strong signal for the haplotype DRB1-47-DQB1-167 (P=9.02 × 10-15). In silico analysis showed that DRB1 four-digit allele groups defined by DRB1 47F bind to a greater complexity of core 9-mer epitopes compared with DRB1 47Y, especially across repeats in the C-term choline-binding region. Consequent differences in CD4 T-cell help for IgG1 to PspC could have implications for vaccine design. Further analysis in other cohorts is merited.