The empirical power of rare variant association methods: results from sanger sequencing in 1,998 individuals.

Bibliographic Details
Title: The empirical power of rare variant association methods: results from sanger sequencing in 1,998 individuals.
Authors: Martin Ladouceur, Zari Dastani, Yurii S Aulchenko, Celia M T Greenwood, J Brent Richards
Source: PLoS Genetics, Vol 8, Iss 2, p e1002496 (2012)
Publisher Information: Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2012.
Publication Year: 2012
Collection: LCC:Genetics
Subject Terms: Genetics, QH426-470
More Details: The role of rare genetic variation in the etiology of complex disease remains unclear. However, the development of next-generation sequencing technologies offers the experimental opportunity to address this question. Several novel statistical methodologies have been recently proposed to assess the contribution of rare variation to complex disease etiology. Nevertheless, no empirical estimates comparing their relative power are available. We therefore assessed the parameters that influence their statistical power in 1,998 individuals Sanger-sequenced at seven genes by modeling different distributions of effect, proportions of causal variants, and direction of the associations (deleterious, protective, or both) in simulated continuous trait and case/control phenotypes. Our results demonstrate that the power of recently proposed statistical methods depend strongly on the underlying hypotheses concerning the relationship of phenotypes with each of these three factors. No method demonstrates consistently acceptable power despite this large sample size, and the performance of each method depends upon the underlying assumption of the relationship between rare variants and complex traits. Sensitivity analyses are therefore recommended to compare the stability of the results arising from different methods, and promising results should be replicated using the same method in an independent sample. These findings provide guidance in the analysis and interpretation of the role of rare base-pair variation in the etiology of complex traits and diseases.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 1553-7390
1553-7404
Relation: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3271058?pdf=render; https://doaj.org/toc/1553-7390; https://doaj.org/toc/1553-7404
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002496
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/0ec7dc28bbf9474aa601e91f450d9b6d
Accession Number: edsdoj.0ec7dc28bbf9474aa601e91f450d9b6d
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
More Details
ISSN:15537390
15537404
DOI:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002496
Published in:PLoS Genetics
Language:English