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Abstract:
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Early family studies of psychiatric disorders began about a century ago, but our understanding for the genetics of mental and behavioral disorders remains limited. One challenge arises from the fact that multiple phenotypes are needed to characterize psychiatric disorders that usually do not occur alone. In fact, comorbidity is a rule other than exception. To address this challenge, I will first demonstrate the usefulness of considering multiple traits in genetic studies of complex disorders. Then, I will present a nonparametric test to studying the association between multiple traits and a candidate marker. After a brief summary for the theoretical properties of the test, the nominal type I error and power of the proposed test will be compared with existing test through simulation studies. The advantage of the proposed test will also be demonstrated by a study of alcoholism.
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