Similarity Measures for Clustering SNP and Epidemiological Data

The issue of suitable similarity measures for a joint consideration of so called SNP data and epidemiological variables arises from the GENICA (Interdisciplinary Study Group on Gene Environment Interaction and Breast Cancer in Germany) casecontrol study of sporadic breast cancer. The GENICA study aims to investigate the influence and interaction of single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) loci and exogenous risk factors. A single nucleotide polymorphism is a point mutation that is present in at least 1 % of a population. SNPs are the most common form of human genetic variations. In particular, we consider 43 SNP loci in genes involved in the metabolism of hormones, xenobiotics and drugs as well as in the repair of DNA. Assuming that these single nucleotide changes may lead, for instance, to altered enzymes or to a reduced or enhanced amount of the original enzymes – with each alteration alone having minor effects – the aim is to detect combinations of SNPs that under certain environmental conditions increase the risk of sporadic breast cancer. The search for patterns in the present data set may be performed by a variety of clustering and classification approaches. I consider here the problem of suitable