Plantar fasciitis is the common cause of stabbing heel pain worst with the first steps of the day — a 2018 study of over 100,000 people's genotypes found one variant near WWP2 that modestly raises the odds of it.
Plantar fasciitis is inflammation and irritation of the plantar fascia — the thick band of tissue running along the bottom of the foot, connecting the heel bone to the toes. It is one of the most common causes of heel pain, typically felt as a sharp, stabbing sensation that is worst with the first steps after waking or after a period of rest, and often improves somewhat with activity before worsening again later in the day.
Kim et al. 2018 studied genetic associations with plantar fascial disorders across a large, multi-ancestry cohort — 21,629 cases and 80,879 controls combined across European, Latin American, East Asian, and African American ancestry groups. The paper's own title reports finding two genetic variants; this site currently holds one of them, rs62051384, which sits in an intron of WWP2 and about 70 kb upstream of NOB1. The risk allele (T, carried by roughly 37% of people) was associated with modestly increased odds of plantar fascial disorders — odds ratio 1.07 (95% CI 1.04-1.09), p=2×10⁻⁸.
An odds ratio of 1.07 on a common allele is a small population-level effect, not a predictive test — genome-wide significant, meaning the association is very unlikely to be due to chance at this sample size, but explaining only a small fraction of who develops plantar fasciitis. Most of the condition's risk is explained by non-genetic factors: repetitive strain, body weight, foot mechanics, and activity level.
Plantar fasciitis is diagnosed clinically — by the pattern of heel pain and tenderness on examination — not by genotype. The variant on this page is not used by any guideline to diagnose plantar fasciitis or to decide who needs treatment.
Standard first-line treatment (stretching, supportive footwear, activity modification, and time) works for most people regardless of genotype. Nothing about carrying the rs62051384 risk allele changes how the condition is managed.
What a 23andMe/AncestryDNA export or raw VCF can and can't tell you about Plantar Fascial Disorders comes down to these specific, well-studied positions — not a diagnosis.
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Plantar Fascial Disorders. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/conditions/plantar-fascial-disorders
Plantar fasciitis is inflammation and irritation of the plantar fascia, the thick tissue band connecting the heel bone to the toes — the common cause of heel pain that is worst with the first steps of the day.
Studying 21,629 people with plantar fascial disorders and 80,879 controls across four ancestry groups, it found the rs62051384-T allele, near WWP2, associated with modestly increased odds (odds ratio 1.07, p=2×10⁻⁸).
No. The risk allele is common (carried by roughly 37% of people) and its effect is small — an odds ratio of 1.07 explains only a small fraction of who develops the condition. Non-genetic factors like repetitive strain, body weight, and foot mechanics matter far more.
No. Plantar fasciitis is diagnosed clinically and treated the same way — stretching, supportive footwear, activity modification — regardless of genotype.
Free to reuse. This page's text is original writing from freely-available research, licensed CC BY 4.0 — reuse it, including commercially, with attribution to MyGeneLog™. It's general research-derived information, not medical advice or a diagnosis — see Terms of Use.