Exome sequencing and analysis of 44,028 British South Asians enriched for high autozygosity

Genes & Health (G&H) is a biomedical study of adult British Pakistani and Bangladeshi research volunteers enriched for autozygosity. Here we performed whole-exome sequencing in 44,028 G&H participants, establishing a large publicly available South Asian exome resource linked to longitudinal electronic health records. We performed exome-wide association analyses for 645 electronic health record-derived traits under additive and recessive models, and meta-analyses of 33 cardiometabolic traits with UK Biobank, finding more than 100 novel gene-phenotype associations. We identified 2,991 genes with rare biallelic predicted loss-of-function ('knockout') genotypes, 546 of which had not been previously reported. We show that drugs targeting genes with knockouts in adults are associated with a 2.2-fold higher likelihood of progressing beyond phase 1 clinical trials. We further…