Nasal polyps and asthma often arrive together, and the pair is harder to treat than either alone. A 2025 study found 131 associations across the two and showed that 71 loci act on both. 15 of its positions for the polyp disease are in this catalogue.
Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps is long-lasting inflammation of the nose and sinuses in which soft growths, polyps, form in the lining. It blocks the nose and dulls the sense of smell, and it often comes with asthma. When the two coexist, the study behind this page notes, the picture is more allergic, the disease more severe, and first-line treatment more likely to fail for both.
Saarentaus et al. 2025, in Nature Communications, combined FinnGen and the UK Biobank to study three conditions side by side: asthma in 71,481 people, chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps in 9,626, and chronic rhinosinusitis without polyps in 15,448, against 685,602 controls. It detected 131 associations. Of the new loci, 17 were for asthma, 33 for the polyp disease, and one for sinusitis without polyps.
The central result is the overlap: 71 loci had a shared effect on asthma and on the polyp disease. The genes involved gathered in three immune pathways — type 2 inflammation, the kind behind allergy; Jak-STAT signalling; and FOXP3 signalling, which governs the cells that restrain the immune system. The study also found 17 protein-altering variants, among them a new one in TP63 that raised the odds of the polyp disease by about half (odds ratio 1.519, 95% confidence interval 1.331 to 1.734). That variant is not in this catalogue.
This catalogue holds 15 of the positions the study reports for the polyp disease. Six are filed on this site under it: rs62408224 in BACH2, rs113752715 in PTPRC, rs11894248 in NCOA1, rs113372064 in D2HGDH, rs9828592 in GLB1 and rs116877855 in PTP4A3.
The strongest of the 15 in the study's records is rs34210653, a protein-altering variant in ALOX15. It was already on this site from an earlier study of chronic rhinosinusitis and also appears on the page about chronic rhinosinusitis and taste receptors, which follows a different mechanism. The other eight were filed here under other traits, several of them immune: rs12531540 in JAZF1 under lupus, rs2182885 in UBAC2 under a white blood cell measure, rs41444548 in TBX21 under a red blood cell measure. The asthma page and the allergy topic hold the rest of what this site has on the neighbouring conditions.
Positions joined since this page was written
What this is The text above discusses the variants this page was written around. Since then the catalogue has joined 3 more positions to it, by shared trait or shared paper. They are listed here by the paper each came from; the text does not describe them, and each variant page carries that study's own record.
Sakaue S et al. 2021, Nature genetics rs9271580 (near HLA-DQA1), rs62247034 (FOXP1), rs338593 (CYP2S1) — PMID:34594039
Nasal polyps are diagnosed by looking inside the nose, usually with a thin endoscope, and sometimes with a CT scan — not from a genotype. None of the 15 variants on this page is used by any guideline to predict, screen for or diagnose the disease.
Each variant here shifts the odds by a small amount. Steroid nasal sprays and rinses are the usual first treatment, surgery removes polyps that do not respond, and medicines that block type 2 inflammation are used in severe disease. The study's pathways point at the same biology those medicines act on; it did not test a treatment, and its authors present the results as avenues for follow-up.
What a 23andMe/AncestryDNA export or raw VCF can and can't tell you about Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps comes down to these specific, well-studied positions — not a diagnosis.
The studies behind these variants recruited participants from different ancestries — a result found in one population doesn't always transfer to another. Based on 9 of 18 linked studies with a resolved discovery ancestry.
Databases, guidelines and references
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Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/conditions/chronic-rhinosinusitis-with-nasal-polyps
Long-lasting inflammation of the nose and sinuses in which soft growths, polyps, form in the lining. It blocks the nose, dulls the sense of smell and often comes with asthma.
Partly. A 2025 study in FinnGen and the UK Biobank found 131 associations across asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis, including 33 new loci for the polyp disease. Each has a small effect.
Part of the answer is shared inheritance: the 2025 study found 71 loci with a shared effect on both, gathered in immune pathways that include type 2 inflammation.
No. They are population-level findings of small effect. Nasal polyps are diagnosed by examining the nose, and no guideline uses a genotype to predict them.
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