When the previously reported WES data of four leprosy patients and four healthy relatives from two leprosy families in Henan and Yunnan Province were included to screen candidate variants [29], three novel rare nonsynonymous variants which are only present in cases from at least two families but absent in all the controls, i.e. rs746426634 in STYK1 (MIM: 611433), rs75765336 in GBGT1 (MIM: 606074) and rs141225250 in GCC2 (MIM: 612711) were confirmed by Sanger sequencing and further determined in the 55 leprosy cases. Here, STYK1 is linked to leprosy.