OBJECTIVE The kernel machine (KM) test reportedly performs well in the set-based association test of rare variants. Many studies have been conducted to measure phenotypes at multiple time points, but the standard KM methodology has only been available for phenotypes at a single time point. In addition, family-based designs have been widely used in genetic association studies; therefore, the dat...

Meta-analysis, a statistical tool for combining results across studies, is becoming popular as a method for resolving discrepancies in genetic association studies. Persistent difficulties in obtaining robust, replicable results in genetic association studies are almost certainly because genetic effects are small, requiring studies with many thousands of subjects to be detected. In this article,...

Once upon a time, as all the best children’s stories begin, a lot of clever geneticists began a huge hunt for the “asthma gene.” At first they thought they had found it, but then more andmore of the hunters found different “asthma genes,” and sometimes some gene hunters could not find the gene that previous hunters thoughtwas thekeyone. Life becamemore and more confusing, and the root causes, w...

Publication bias may exist when nonsignificant findings remain unpublished, thereby artificially inflating the apparent magnitude of an effect. This concern is not new, but it is particularly current in relation to genetic association studies. Data from a recent meta-analysis of association studies of personality were used to assess the potential of different graphical and statistical methods f...

Variable and person-oriented analyses were used to explore the associations between personality and three previously untested general iris characteristics: crypts, pigment dots and contraction furrows. Personality data, as measured by the NEO PI-R and ratings of iris characteristics from 428 undergraduate students were collected. Crypts were significantly associated with five approach-related b...

myocardial infarction (mi) and its major determinant, coronary artery disease (cad), are complex diseases arising from the interaction between several genetic and environmental factors. until recently, the genetic basis of these diseases was poorly understood. genome-wide genetic association studies have afforded a comprehensive insight into the association between genetic variants and diseases...

The case-control study design is popular for genetic association studies of complex human diseases. However, case-control studies may suffer from bias due to population stratification. In this paper, the authors present simple formulas that can set a limit to the havoc population stratification bias can wreak (the lower and upper bounds of the confounding rate ratio and the upper bound of the t...

The Cochran-Armitage trend test is a standard procedure in genetic association studies. It is a directed test with high power to detect genetic effects that follow the gene-dosage model. In this paper, the author proposes optimal trend tests for genetic association studies of heterogeneous diseases. Monte-Carlo simulations show that the power gain of the optimal trend tests over the conventiona...

OBJECTIVES Combining the analysis of family-based samples with unrelated individuals can enhance the power of genetic association studies. Various combined analysis techniques have been recently developed; as yet, there have been no comparisons of their power, or robustness to confounding factors. We investigated empirically the power of up to six combined methods using simulated samples of tri...

Meta-analysis has become a popular tool for genetic association studies to combine different genetic studies. A key challenge in meta-analysis is heterogeneity, or the differences in effect sizes between studies. Heterogeneity complicates the interpretation of meta-analyses. In this paper, we describe ForestPMPlot, a flexible visualization tool for analyzing studies included in a meta-analysis....