BACKGROUND Only a minority of the genetic components of prostate cancer risk have been explained. Some observed associations of SNPs with prostate cancer might arise from associations of these SNPs with circulating prostate-specific antigen (PSA) because PSA values are used to select controls. METHODS We undertook a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of screen-detected prostate cancer (Prot...

UNLABELLED Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are increasingly used to tag genetic loci associated with phenotypes such as risk of complex diseases. Technically, this is done genome-wide without prior restriction or knowledge of biological feasibility in scans referred to as genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Depending on the linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure at a particular locus,...

Many genetic association studies used single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) data to identify genetic variants for complex diseases. Although SNP-based associations are most common in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), gene-based association analysis has received increasing attention in understanding genetic etiologies for complex diseases. While both methods have been used to analyze the ...

Before the advent of genome-wide association studies (GWASs), hundreds of candidate genes for obesity-susceptibility had been identified through a variety of approaches. We examined whether those obesity candidate genes are enriched for associations with body mass index (BMI) compared with non-candidate genes by using data from a large-scale GWAS. A thorough literature search identified 547 can...

This paper shows that the effects of causal SNPs on lifespan, estimated through GWAS, may be confounded and the genetic structure of the study population may be responsible for this effect. Simulation experiments show that levels of linkage disequilibrium (LD) and other parameters of the population structure describing connections between two causal SNPs may substantially influence separate est...

Recent genetic association studies have implicated several candidate susceptibility variants for schizophrenia among general populations. Rs1344706, an intronic SNP within ZNF804A, was identified as one of the most compelling candidate risk SNPs for schizophrenia in Europeans through genome-wide association studies (GWASs) and replications as well as large-scale meta-analyses. However, in Han C...

BACKGROUND Numerous experimental studies suggest that B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is cardioprotective; however, in clinical studies, higher plasma BNP concentrations have been associated with incident cardiovascular disease and higher left ventricular mass. Genetic association studies may allow us to determine the true causal directions without confounding by compensatory mechanisms. MET...

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified ∼100 genetic loci associated with prostate cancer risk. Less than a dozen of these loci were initially identified from GWAS in two Asian populations, likely because of smaller sample sizes of these individual GWAS in Asians. Here, we conduct a large-scale meta-analysis of two GWAS from the Japanese population (1,583 cases and 3,386 controls...

Progress in mapping loci associated with common complex diseases or quantitative inherited traits has been expedited by large-scale meta-analyses combining information across multiple studies, assembled through collaborative networks of researchers. Participating studies will usually have been independently designed and implemented in unique settings that are potential sources of phenotype, anc...

It is believed that interactions among genes (epistasis) may play an important role in susceptibility to common diseases (Moore and Williams [2002]. Ann Med 34:88-95; Ritchie et al. [2001]. Am J Hum Genet 69:138-147). To study the underlying genetic variants of diseases, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that simultaneously assay several hundreds of thousands of SNPs are being increasingly...