Transition from Genetic Studies to Personalized Medicine: A Consulting Experience

• Activity Number: 399
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Consulting
• Author(s): Fang-Chi Hsu*+
• Companies: Wake Forest University School of Medicine
• Keywords: statistical consultation ; translational research ; risk prediction ; genetic association studies

Abstract

Translational research often takes findings from genetic studies (e.g., genome wide association studies) to clinical applications. Such discovery uses genetic variants to generate risk profiles in the effort to predict an individual's disease risk. Identification of high risk individuals for prevention, screening, and early diagnosis is an important step towards the overall goal of personalized medicine. When consulting with clients, the translational approach requires us to know the rapidly changing subject matter as well as the appropriate statistical methods. In this talk, common statistical consulting requests, including the issues for study designs and analyses, will be discussed. For example, what study design should be used to obtain a reasonable genotype relative risk which can be used to calculate the absolute risk of developing a disease.