Genetic association studies in complex diseases

Strategies for Genetic Studies of Complex Diseases

In light of this, it is likely that GWAS hits found in intergenic regions far from known genes are true associations whose biology is not yet understood, rather than false positives. The human genome is incompletely annotated. Regions where GWAS associations have been found, but no known genes are located, could easily harbor unidentified new genes or regulatory elements. For instance, the auth...

Genome-Wide Association Studies: Progress in Identifying Genetic Biomarkers in Common, Complex Diseases

Novel, comprehensive approaches for biomarker discovery and validation are urgently needed. One particular area of methodologic need is for discovery of novel genetic biomarkers in complex diseases and traits. Here, we review recent successes in the use of genome wide association (GWA) approaches to identify genetic biomarkers in common human diseases and traits. Such studies are yielding initi...

Joint Analysis of Snp and Gene Expression Data in Genetic Association Studies of Complex Diseases.

Genetic association studies have been a popular approach for assessing the association between common Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and complex diseases. However, other genomic data involved in the mechanism from SNPs to disease, e.g., gene expressions, are usually neglected in these association studies. In this paper, we propose to exploit gene expression information to more powerfull...

Cladistic analysis: its applications in association studies of complex diseases.

INTRODUCTION With the increase in genotype data generated by high throughput typing technologies, there is currently a lack of complexity-oriented analytical methods that can maximise the information obtained from these raw data for the study of complex diseases. We introduce the cladistic analysis that is traditionally applied in evolution studies and taxonomy, to specify relevant comparisons ...

Designing genetic association studies for complex traits in India