Robust Joint Analysis with Data Fusion in Two-Stage Quantitative Trait Genome-Wide Association Studies. (31st October 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pan, Dong-Dong; Xiong, Wen-Jun; Zhou, Ji-Yuan; Pan, Ying; Zhou, Guo-Li; Fung, Wing-Kam
• Other Names: Li Qizhai Academic Editor.
• Is Part Of: Computational and mathematical methods in medicine. Volume 2013(2013)
• Publication Date: 2013-10-31
• Subjects: Medicine -- Computer simulation -- Periodicals; Medicine -- Mathematical models -- Periodicals; 610.11
• DOI: 10.1155/2013/843563
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1748-670X

Abstract

Abstract : Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) in identifying the disease-associated genetic variants have been proved to be a great pioneering work. Two-stage design and analysis are often adopted in GWASs. Considering the genetic model uncertainty, many robust procedures have been proposed and applied in GWASs. However, the existing approaches mostly focused on binary traits, and few work has been done on continuous (quantitative) traits, since the statistical significance of these robust tests is difficult to calculate. In this paper, we develop a powerful F -statistic-based robust joint analysis method for quantitative traits using the combined raw data from both stages in the framework of two-staged GWASs. Explicit expressions are obtained to calculate the statistical significance and power. We show using simulations that the proposed method is substantially more robust than the F -test based on the additive model when the underlying genetic model is unknown. An example for rheumatic arthritis (RA) is used for illustration.