Abstract
Males and females exhibit differences in proteome profiles associated with disease risk. However, sex-dimorphic protein quantitative trait loci (SD-pQTL) and their effects on sex differences in health disorders have not been thoroughly investigated. We conducted a sex-stratified, genome-wide association study on 2,922 proteins using data from 30,272 individuals of Caucasian ancestry from the UK Biobank and compared the estimated effects on protein levels of these variants in the men and women to identify SD-pQTLs. The identified SD-pQTLs were replicated using data from two Japanese cohorts (comprising 2,886 and 1,394 individuals, respectively), as well as from 1,990 Finnish, 630 South Asian, and 662 Black ancestry individuals. Sex-dimorphic pleiotropy and the causal relationship between protein levels and health disorders were assessed using the identified SD-pQTLs. We identified 113 SD-pQTLs associated with 65 proteins. Of the 113 SD-pQTLs, 52 were significant in both sexes, five were not significant in either sex, and 42 and 14 were significant only in males and females, respectively. Variant rs2270416 was significantly associated with the CDH15 protein in both sexes but showed opposite effect direction in men and women. Of the 113 SD-pQTLs identified, a total of 41 were replicated in a meta-analysis encompassing Japanese, South Asian, and Black ancestry individuals. SD-pQTLs for proteins APOE (rs157581) and SNAP25 (rs4420638) exhibited sex-dimorphic associations with dementia, indicating sex dimorphic pleiotropy in both proteins and health disorders. From sex-stratified Mendelian randomization using the SD-pQTLs, proteins NCAM1 and PZP showed significant causal relationship with dementia in males and females, respectively. The present study provides evidence of sex-dimorphic genetic architecture in protein-level regulation, elucidating the proteo-genetic architecture for sex differences in human variation.