Rare coding TTN variants are associated with electrocardiographic QT interval in the general population.

We have shown previously that noncoding variants mapping around a specific set of 170 genes encoding cardiomyocyte intercalated disc (ID) proteins are more enriched for associations with QT interval than observed for genome-wide comparisons. At a false discovery rate (FDR) of 5%, we had identified 28 such ID protein-encoding genes. Here, we assessed whether coding variants at these 28 genes affect QT interval in the general population as well. We used exome sequencing in 4,469 European American (EA) and 1,880 African American (AA) ancestry individuals from the population-based ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk In Communities) Study cohort to focus on rare (allele frequency