Guillen-Guio B, Lorenzo-Salazar JM, Ma SF, et al. - Researchers sought for new genetic variants related to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) susceptibility and intended to afford complementary functional evidence of their effect in gene regulation, by performing a case-control genome-wide association study (GWAS). This study involved cases (patients with sepsis-associated ARDS) and controls (patients with sepsis without ARDS). Overall 1,935 European individuals were included in the GWAS. Experts discovered a new genome-wide significant link with sepsis-related ARDS susceptibility (rs9508032) located within the Fms-related tyrosine kinase 1 ( FLT1) gene, which encodes vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 1 (VEGFR-1). As per the findings, the vascular endothelial growth factor signalling pathway has a role in ARDS pathogenesis. VEGFR-1 was identified as a potential therapeutic target.