Genome-wide association studies are helping to dissect the etiology of complex diseases. Although case-control association tests are generally more powerful than family-based association tests, population stratification can lead to spurious disease-marker association or mask a true association. Several methods have been proposed to match cases and controls prior to genotyping, using family info...

Transmission of the two parental alleles to offspring deviating from the Mendelian ratio is termed Transmission Ratio Distortion (TRD), occurs throughout gametic and embryonic development. TRD has been well-studied in animals, but remains largely unknown in humans. The Transmission Disequilibrium Test (TDT) was first proposed to test for association and linkage in case-trios (affected offspring...

Multivariate phenotypes may be characterized collectively by a variety of low level traits, such as in the diagnosis of a disease that relies on multiple disease indicators. Such multivariate phenotypes are often used in genetic association studies. If highly heritable components of a multivariate phenotype can be identified, it can maximize the likelihood of finding genetic associations. Exist...

The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia (SZ) has motivated a large number of genetic association studies but few if any dopaminergic (DA) polymorphisms are accepted as credible risk factors at present. To evaluate whether dopamine-related genes have been investigated adequately, we surveyed public genetic databases and published SZ association studies with regard to 14 conventional DA genes an...

Recent studies have provided evidence that common genetic variations could account for a proportion of leukemia in adult or children. To evaluate the contribution of candidate gene association studies to the understanding of genetic susceptibility to acute lymphoblastic leukemia we conducted a systematic review from published studies. The polymorphisms of genes encoding carcinogen-metabolizi...

Both linkage and association methods have been used to localise and identify genes related to behaviour and other complex traits. The linkage approach (parametric or non-parametric) can be used for whole genome screens to localise genes of unknown function. The parametric linkage approach is very effective for locating single-gene disorders and is usually based on large family pedigrees. The no...

BACKGROUND Effective gene mapping based on genetic association data will require detailed knowledge of patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in human populations. It has been recently suggested that linkage disequilibrium in humans may be organized in a block-like structure, with islands of high LD separated by regions of rapid breakdown of LD due to recombination hotspots. The experimental d...

obesity is currently considered as a serious global health problem which is influenced by environmental and genetic factors. association of genetic variants with obesity is widely scrutinized in recent years. the aim of this study was to evaluate present data on genetics of obesity in iranian population in a systematic review study. to obtain all related studies, google scholar, pubmed, and per...

Genetic epidemiological studies strongly suggest that additive and interactive genes, each with small effects, mediate the genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia. With the human genome working draft at hand, candidate gene (and ultimately large-scale genome-wide) association studies are gaining renewed interest in the effort to unravel the complex genetics of schizophrenia. Linkage and fine ma...