rs117246174 (LRMDA): Male Pattern Baldness Locus

Key takeaways

• rs117246174 near LRMDA is one of 624 genetic loci tied to male pattern baldness in a study of 205,327 European men.
• Male pattern baldness (MPB) is strongly heritable - about 62% of variation is explained by family genetics, and DNA-marker heritability is estimated at 0.39.
• The genetics of MPB overlap modestly with bone mineral density (genetic correlation 0.15) and pancreatic beta-cell function (genetic correlation 0.12) at the genome-wide level.
• The X chromosome contributes 11.6% of the genetic signal for MPB, far more than its share of the overall genome.
• A specific effect size for this variant alone is not reported in the available study text.

What the research says A large genome-wide association study (GWAS, a method that scans hundreds of thousands of genetic positions across many people to find trait-linked variants) examined MPB in 205,327 European males from the UK Biobank and identified 624 near-independent genome-wide loci, collectively explaining a SNP-heritability of 0.25 (SE = 0.01); pedigree-based heritability reached 0.62 (SE = 0.03), confirming MPB as strongly heritable and highly polygenic (meaning hundreds of variants each contribute a small effect). At the genome-wide level, genetic correlations were reported between the set of MPB loci and bone mineral density (rg = 0.15, where rg measures the degree to which the same genetic variants influence two different traits) and pancreatic beta-cell function (rg = 0.12), suggesting partial overlap in underlying genetic architecture.

Reported associations

• Male pattern baldness: rs117246174 in the LRMDA (Leucine Rich Repeats and Myosin Head Domains Containing) region is associated with MPB, identified as part of 624 near-independent loci in a GWAS of 205,327 European males from the UK Biobank; 26 X-chromosome loci within this set explain 11.6% of the SNP-heritability.
• Bone mineral density: Across the full set of MPB-associated loci, a positive genome-wide genetic correlation of rg = 0.15 with bone mineral density was reported; this is an aggregate summary statistic across all identified loci, not a finding specific to rs117246174.
• Pancreatic beta-cell function: A genome-wide genetic correlation of rg = 0.12 between MPB loci and pancreatic beta-cell function (the activity of cells in the pancreas responsible for producing insulin) was reported; this is likewise a genome-wide aggregate, not a variant-specific finding.
• Reproductive fitness: Genetic correlations with reproductive traits were noted, with a linear selection gradient of -0.018 per MPB standard deviation, indicating a small statistical association between MPB-linked alleles and reproductive fitness measures.

Evidence quality The primary evidence comes from a well-powered GWAS of 205,327 European males, placing it among the largest MPB genetic studies in the literature at the time of publication. SNP-heritability is robustly estimated (h2SNP = 0.39, SE = 0.01). However, the available study text does not report an individual effect size or p-value for rs117246174 specifically, so variant-level evidence is limited to identification as one locus within a broader polygenic signal of 624 loci. Genetic correlations with bone mineral density and pancreatic beta-cell function are aggregate statistics across all MPB loci and do not isolate the contribution of this locus. The cohort is exclusively of European ancestry, which limits generalizability to other populations. Replication of this specific variant in an independent cohort is not described in the available study text, making variant-level conclusions preliminary.

Lifestyle considerations No lifestyle considerations on file for this variant.