Pathway analysis of GWAS provides new insights into genetic susceptibility to 3 inflammatory diseases.

ABSTRACT: Although the introduction of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have greatly increased the number of genes associated with common diseases, only a small proportion of the predicted genetic contribution has so far been elucidated. Studying the cumulative variation of polymorphisms in multiple genes acting in functional pathways may provide a complementary approach to the more common single SNP association approach in understanding genetic determinants of common disease. We developed a novel pathway-based method to assess the combined contribution of multiple genetic variants acting within canonical biological pathways and applied it to data from 14,000 UK individuals with 7 common diseases. We tested inflammatory pathways for association with Crohn's disease (CD), rheumatoid arthritis (

SUBMITTER: Eleftherohorinou H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2778995 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature