Evaluation of population impact of candidate polymorphisms for coronary heart disease in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort.

In order to evaluate the population impact of putative causal genetic variants over the life course of disease, we extended the static estimation of population-attributable risk fraction and developed a novel tool to evaluate how the population impact changes over time using the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort data provided to the Genetic Analysis Workshop 16, Problem 2. A set of population-attributable risk fractions based on survival functions were estimated under the proportional hazards models. The development of this novel measure of population impact creates a more comprehensive estimate of population impact over the life course of disease, which may help us to better understand genetic susceptibility at the population level.