Science Spotlight: HTT variant increases risk for fibromyalgia

An international consortium conducted the largest genetic study of fibromyalgia to date, identifying 26 genome-wide significant risk loci and providing evidence that the disorder is a CNS condition rather than a peripheral or autoimmune one.

The meta-analysis pooled 11 cohorts spanning 54,629 cases of fibromyalgia and over 2.5 million controls. The strongest signal was a coding variant in HTT, the gene that causes Huntington's disease, conferring about a 9% increase in fibromyalgia risk. The variant is statistically independent from the repeat expansion that causes Huntington's itself...