Furthermore, with progressively stringent P-value thresholds, we observed increasingly selective enrichment of disease-associated variants within specific cell types (Fig. 5). Strikingly, in the case of Crohn’s disease, the Th17 (12.0-fold enriched) and Th1 (8.87-fold enriched) T-cell subtypes have a concentration of the most-significant GWAS variants in their DHSs (Fig. 5A). While Crohn’s pathology has classically been associated with Th1 cytokine responses, an emerging consensus points to a defining role for IL17-producing Th17 cells (29). Notably, this analysis was accomplished without any prior knowledge about Crohn’s disease pathology.
