Schaid Daniel J, Rowland Charles M, Tines David E, Jacobson Robert M, Poland Gregory A
Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic/Foundation, Rochester, MN 55905, USA.
Am J Hum Genet. 2002 Feb;70(2):425-34. doi: 10.1086/338688. Epub 2001 Dec 27.
A key step toward the discovery of a gene related to a trait is the finding of an association between the trait and one or more haplotypes. Haplotype analyses can also provide critical information regarding the function of a gene; however, when unrelated subjects are sampled, haplotypes are often ambiguous because of unknown linkage phase of the measured sites along a chromosome. A popular method of accounting for this ambiguity in case-control studies uses a likelihood that depends on haplotype frequencies, so that the haplotype frequencies can be compared between the cases and controls; however, this traditional method is limited to a binary trait (case vs. control), and it does not provide a method of testing the statistical significance of specific haplotypes. To address these limitations, we developed new methods of testing the statistical association between haplotypes and a wide variety of traits, including binary, ordinal, and quantitative traits. Our methods allow adjustment for nongenetic covariates, which may be critical when analyzing genetically complex traits. Furthermore, our methods provide several different global tests for association, as well as haplotype-specific tests, which give a meaningful advantage in attempts to understand the roles of many different haplotypes. The statistics can be computed rapidly, making it feasible to evaluate the associations between many haplotypes and a trait. To illustrate the use of our new methods, they are applied to a study of the association of haplotypes (composed of genes from the human-leukocyte-antigen complex) with humoral immune response to measles vaccination. Limited simulations are also presented to demonstrate the validity of our methods, as well as to provide guidelines on how our methods could be used.
发现与某一性状相关基因的关键一步是找到该性状与一个或多个单倍型之间的关联。单倍型分析还可以提供有关基因功能的关键信息;然而,在对无亲缘关系的个体进行采样时,由于沿染色体测量位点的连锁相未知,单倍型往往不明确。在病例对照研究中,一种常用的解决这种不明确性的方法是使用一种依赖于单倍型频率的似然性,以便能够比较病例组和对照组之间的单倍型频率;然而,这种传统方法仅限于二元性状(病例与对照),并且它没有提供一种检验特定单倍型统计显著性的方法。为了解决这些局限性,我们开发了新的方法来检验单倍型与多种性状之间的统计关联,包括二元、有序和定量性状。我们的方法允许对非遗传协变量进行调整,这在分析遗传复杂性状时可能至关重要。此外,我们的方法提供了几种不同的全局关联检验以及单倍型特异性检验,这在试图理解许多不同单倍型的作用方面具有显著优势。这些统计量可以快速计算,使得评估许多单倍型与一个性状之间的关联成为可能。为了说明我们新方法的应用,将它们应用于一项关于单倍型(由人类白细胞抗原复合体中的基因组成)与麻疹疫苗体液免疫反应关联的研究。还进行了有限的模拟,以证明我们方法的有效性,并提供关于如何使用我们方法的指导。