An Integrative Analysis Approach: Joint-Conditional Tests for Population-Based and Family-Based Association Studies

• Activity Number: 12
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 1, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Sharon Lutz*+
• Companies: Harvard School of Public Health

Abstract

In population-based genetic association studies, the standard approach is to model the phenotype of interest as a function of the offspring genotype. We propose an alternative approach based on conditional score-tests that treat the genetic information as the random variable and condition upon the phenotypic information. This approach is applicable to both population-based data and family-data. By treating the phenotype data as deterministic, the validity of the approach does not depend on the correctness of assumptions about the phenotype, making this approach robust against phenotypic heterogeneity. Based on theoretical considerations and on simulation studies, we show that our approach is robust against mis-specification of phenotype assumption and, at the same time, achieves the same or higher power level as standard genetic association tests for population-based designs