ABO blood type B and fucosyltransferase 2 non-secretor status as genetic risk factors for chronic pancreatitis

Sir, We thank Kirsten et al 1 for their comments on our recent study,2 in which we reported a genome-wide analysis on ∼4000 volunteers from the population-based Study of Health in Pommerania (SHIP) cohort3 with replication in 1444 blood donors. We had found a significant association between higher serum lipase activities and three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) as well as the fucosyltransferase-2 (FUT2) non-secretor status (homozygosity for the FUT2 p.W134X mutation) and the ABO blood type B (figure 1). In more than 1000 patients with pancreatitis, we confirmed that FUT2 non-secretor status and blood type B are also disease risk factors, with a greater than twofold OR for blood type B compared with blood type O. Figure 1 Distribution of ABO blood types in blood donor subgroups with increasing mean serum lipase activity. One thousand four hundred and forty-four blood donors were stratified into subgroups (cohort size in brackets) of increasing serum …