These ieQTLs can also provide valuable information about the cell types of interest for disease-associated SNPs. For example, the A allele of variant rs4698412, which is associated with increased risk for Parkinson’s disease (PD), also increased the expression of CD38, for which we identified a replicating astrocyte ieQTL (Fig. 4f and Supplementary Fig. 20f). This gene is an immunomodulatory agent and is mainly expressed in neurons, astrocytes and microglia27, and increased levels of CD38 are observed with neuroinflammation (Supplementary Note).
