scholarly journals Adjustment for index event bias in genome-wide association studies of subsequent events

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Dudbridge ◽  
Richard J. Allen ◽  
Nuala A. Sheehan ◽  
A. Floriaan Schmidt ◽  
James C. Lee ◽  
...  

AbstractFollowing numerous genome-wide association studies of disease susceptibility, there is increasing interest in genetic associations with prognosis, survival or other subsequent events. Such associations are vulnerable to index event bias, by which selection of subjects according to disease status creates biased associations if common causes of incidence and prognosis are not accounted for. We propose an adjustment for index event bias using the residuals from the regression of genetic effects on prognosis on genetic effects on incidence. Our approach eliminates this bias when direct genetic effects on incidence and prognosis are independent, and otherwise reduces bias in realistic situations. In a study of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, we reverse a paradoxical association of the strong susceptibility gene MUCSB with increased survival, suggesting instead a significant association with decreased survival. In re-analysis of a study of Crohn’s disease prognosis, four regions remain associated at genome-wide significance but with increased standard errors.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 648-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoichi Kakuta ◽  
Yosuke Kawai ◽  
Takeo Naito ◽  
Atsushi Hirano ◽  
Junji Umeno ◽  
...  

Abstract Background and Aims Genome-wide association studies [GWASs] of European populations have identified numerous susceptibility loci for Crohn’s disease [CD]. Susceptibility genes differ by ethnicity, however, so GWASs specific for Asian populations are required. This study aimed to clarify the Japanese-specific genetic background for CD by a GWAS using the Japonica array [JPA] and subsequent imputation with the 1KJPN reference panel. Methods Two independent Japanese case/control sets (Tohoku region [379 CD patients, 1621 controls] and Kyushu region [334 CD patients, 462 controls]) were included. GWASs were performed separately for each population, followed by a meta-analysis. Two additional replication sets [254 + 516 CD patients and 287 + 565 controls] were analysed for top hit single nucleotide polymorphisms [SNPs] from novel genomic regions. Results Genotype data of 4 335 144 SNPs from 713 Japanese CD patients and 2083 controls were analysed. SNPs located in TNFSF15 (rs78898421, Pmeta = 2.59 × 10−26, odds ratio [OR] = 2.10), HLA-DQB1 [rs184950714, pmeta = 3.56 × 10−19, OR = 2.05], ZNF365, and 4p14 loci were significantly associated with CD in Japanese individuals. Replication analyses were performed for four novel candidate loci [p <1 × 10−6], and rs488200 located upstream of RAP1A was significantly associated with CD [pcombined = 4.36 × 10−8, OR = 1.31]. Transcriptome analysis of CD4+ effector memory T cells from lamina propria mononuclear cells of CD patients revealed a significant association of rs488200 with RAP1A expression. Conclusions RAP1A is a novel susceptibility locus for CD in the Japanese population.


2017 ◽  
Vol 242 (13) ◽  
pp. 1325-1334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yizhou Zhu ◽  
Cagdas Tazearslan ◽  
Yousin Suh

Genome-wide association studies have shown that the far majority of disease-associated variants reside in the non-coding regions of the genome, suggesting that gene regulatory changes contribute to disease risk. To identify truly causal non-coding variants and their affected target genes remains challenging but is a critical step to translate the genetic associations to molecular mechanisms and ultimately clinical applications. Here we review genomic/epigenomic resources and in silico tools that can be used to identify causal non-coding variants and experimental strategies to validate their functionalities. Impact statement Most signals from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) map to the non-coding genome, and functional interpretation of these associations remained challenging. We reviewed recent progress in methodologies of studying the non-coding genome and argued that no single approach allows one to effectively identify the causal regulatory variants from GWAS results. By illustrating the advantages and limitations of each method, our review potentially provided a guideline for taking a combinatorial approach to accurately predict, prioritize, and eventually experimentally validate the causal variants.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingshu Wang ◽  
Qingyuan Zhao ◽  
Jack Bowden ◽  
Gilbran Hemani ◽  
George Davey Smith ◽  
...  

Over a decade of genome-wide association studies have led to the finding that significant genetic associations tend to spread across the genome for complex traits. The extreme polygenicity where "all genes affect every complex trait" complicates Mendelian Randomization studies, where natural genetic variations are used as instruments to infer the causal effect of heritable risk factors. We reexamine the assumptions of existing Mendelian Randomization methods and show how they need to be clarified to allow for pervasive horizontal pleiotropy and heterogeneous effect sizes. We propose a comprehensive framework GRAPPLE (Genome-wide mR Analysis under Pervasive PLEiotropy) to analyze the causal effect of target risk factors with heterogeneous genetic instruments and identify possible pleiotropic patterns from data. By using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies, GRAPPLE can efficiently use both strong and weak genetic instruments, detect the existence of multiple pleiotropic pathways, adjust for confounding risk factors, and determine the causal direction. With GRAPPLE, we analyze the effect of blood lipids, body mass index, and systolic blood pressure on 25 disease outcomes, gaining new information on their causal relationships and the potential pleiotropic pathways.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Hindley ◽  
Kevin S O'Connell ◽  
Zillur Rahman ◽  
Oleksandr Frei ◽  
Shahram Bahrami ◽  
...  

Mood instability (MOOD) is a transdiagnostic phenomenon with a prominent neurobiological basis. Recent genome-wide association studies found significant positive genetic correlation between MOOD and major depression (DEP) and weak correlations with other psychiatric disorders. We investigated the polygenic overlap between MOOD and psychiatric disorders beyond genetic correlation to better characterize putative shared genetic determinants. Summary statistics for schizophrenia (SCZ, n=105,318), bipolar disorder (BIP, n=413,466), DEP (n=450,619), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n=53,293) and MOOD (n=363,705), were analysed using the bivariate causal mixture model and conjunctional false discovery rate methods to estimate the proportion of shared variants influencing MOOD and each disorder, and identify jointly associated genomic loci. MOOD correlated positively with all psychiatric disorders, but with wide variation in strength (rg=0.10-0.62). Of 10.4K genomic variants influencing MOOD, 4K-9.4K were estimated to influence psychiatric disorders. MOOD was jointly associated with DEP at 163 loci, SCZ at 110, BIP at 60 and ADHD at 25, with consistent genetic effects in independent samples. Fifty-three jointly associated loci were overlapping across two or more disorders (transdiagnostic), seven of which had discordant effect directions on psychiatric disorders. Genes mapped to loci associated with MOOD and all four disorders were enriched in a single gene-set, synapse organization. The extensive polygenic overlap indicates shared molecular underpinnings across MOOD and psychiatric disorders. However, distinct patterns of genetic correlation and effect directions of shared loci suggest divergent effects on corresponding neurobiological mechanisms which may relate to differences in the core clinical features of each disorder.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oriol Canela-Xandri ◽  
Konrad Rawlik ◽  
Albert Tenesa

ABSTRACTGenome-wide association studies have revealed many loci contributing to the variation of complex traits, yet the majority of loci that contribute to the heritability of complex traits remain elusive. Large study populations with sufficient statistical power are required to detect the small effect sizes of the yet unidentified genetic variants. However, the analysis of huge cohorts, like UK Biobank, is complicated by incidental structure present when collecting such large cohorts. For instance, UK Biobank comprises 107,162 third degree or closer related participants. Traditionally, GWAS have removed related individuals because they comprised an insignificant proportion of the overall sample size, however, removing related individuals in UK Biobank would entail a substantial loss of power. Furthermore, modelling such structure using linear mixed models is computationally expensive, which requires a computational infrastructure that may not be accessible to all researchers. Here we present an atlas of genetic associations for 118 non-binary and 599 binary traits of 408,455 related and unrelated UK Biobank participants of White-British descent. Results are compiled in a publicly accessible database that allows querying genome-wide association summary results for 623,944 genotyped and HapMap2 imputed SNPs, as well downloading whole GWAS summary statistics for over 30 million imputed SNPs from the Haplotype Reference Consortium panel. Our atlas of associations (GeneATLAS,http://geneatlas.roslin.ed.ac.uk) will help researchers to query UK Biobank results in an easy way without the need to incur in high computational costs.


Circulation ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 125 (suppl_10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Franceschini ◽  
Ching-Ti Liu ◽  
W Linda Kao ◽  
Leslie Lange ◽  
Kari E North ◽  
...  

Smoking is a known risk factor for progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) but little is known of the role of smoking exposure on genetic effects of variants influencing kidney traits in the general population. We examined the evidence for effect modification of current smoking on the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and urine albumin to creatinine ratio (UACR), two well established markers of kidney disease, in 23,767 white and 8,110 African American individuals from five studies genotyped using the custom SNP array ITMAT-Broad-CARe (IBC array) in the CARe consortium. We obtained study- and race-specific residuals from linear regression models of natural log-transformed eGFR or UACR regressed on age, sex and study site. We then stratified residuals by current smoking exposure and performed genome wide association analyses using additive genetic models adjusted for 10 principal components, and accounting for family structure using mixed models, if needed. Meta-analyses across smoking-specific strata within each self-reported race were performed using the inverse variance weighted fixed effect models. We assessed smoking interaction using a heterogeneity test (P<0.10) and I 2 metric. Among SNPs reaching the array wide specific significance threshold (2.0x10 -6 ) for association with eGFR or UACR, there was significant between smoking-strata heterogeneity for rs7422339 ( CPS1 , P=0.03, I 2 =77.7%) and rs13333226 ( UMOD , P=0.06, I 2 =71.1%) for eGFR in whites, with larger decreases in eGFR among current smokers compared to past/never smokers. For UACR, rs1801239 (missense variant of CUBN , between smoking-strata heterogeneity P=0.09, I 2 =64.8%) T allele showed less protective effect among current smokers than non-smokers in whites only. These loci have been previously identified in genome wide association studies. Our findings, if replicated, suggest possible important interactions of smoking exposure on the genetic effects of known loci associated with kidney traits. Funding(This research has received full or partial funding support from the American Heart Association, National Center)


2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (9) ◽  
pp. 365-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia B. Munroe ◽  
Andrew Tinker

The study of family pedigrees with rare monogenic cardiovascular disorders has revealed new molecular players in physiological processes. Genome-wide association studies of complex traits with a heritable component may afford a similar and potentially intellectually richer opportunity. In this review we focus on the interpretation of genetic associations and the issue of causality in relation to known and potentially new physiology. We mainly discuss cardiometabolic traits as it reflects our personal interests, but the issues pertain broadly in many other disciplines. We also describe some of the resources that are now available that may expedite follow up of genetic association signals into observations on causal mechanisms and pathophysiology.


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