LEVERAGING LOCAL IDENTITY-BY-DESCENT INCREASES THE POWER OF CASE/CONTROL GWAS WITH RELATED INDIVIDUALS.

ABSTRACT: Large case/control genome-wide association studies (GWAS) often include groups of related individuals with known relationships. When testing for associations at a given locus, current methods incorporate only the familial relationships between individuals. Here, we introduce the chromosome-based Quasi Likelihood Score (cQLS) statistic that incorporates local Identity-By-Descent (IBD) to increase the power to detect associations. In studies robust to population stratification, such as those with case/control sibling pairs, simulations show that the study power can be increased by over 50%. In our example, a GWAS examining late-onset Alzheimers disease, the p-values among the most strongly associated SNPs in the APOE gene tend to decrease, with the smallest p-value decreasing from 1.23 × 10<

SUBMITTER: Sampson JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4275846 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature