Address of Corresponding Author

Hum Hered 2005;60:227-240 (DOI: 10.1159/000091010)

  Key Words

• Genetic screening
• Affected sib pairs
• Multilocus linkage method

  Abstract

Objective: The conventional affected sib pair methods evaluate the linkage information at a locus by considering only marginal information. We describe a multilocus linkage method that uses both the marginal information and information derived from the possible interactions among several disease loci, thereby increasing the significance of loci with modest effects. Methods: Our method is based on a statistic that quantifies the linkage information contained in a set of markers. By a marker selection-reduction process, we screen a set of polymorphisms and select a few that seem linked to disease. Results: We test our approach on genome scan data for inflammatory bowel disease (InfBD) and on simulated data. On real data we detect 6 of the 8 known InfBD loci; on simulated data we obtain improvements in power of up to 40% compared to a conventional single-locus method. Conclusion: Our extensive simulations and the results on real data show that our method is in general more powerful than single-locus methods in detecting disease loci responsible for complex traits. A further advantage of our approach is that it can be extended to make use of both the linkage and the linkage disequilibrium between disease loci and nearby markers.

Copyright © 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel

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  Author Contacts

Iuliana Ionita
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 251 Mercer Street
New York, NY 10012 (USA)
Tel. +1 212 998 3367, Fax +1 212 851 2164
E-Mail ionita@cs.nyu.edu or slo@stat.columbia.edu

  Article Information

Received: July 1, 2005
Accepted after revision: October 10, 2005
Published online: January 17, 2006
Number of Print Pages : 14
Number of Figures : 8, Number of Tables : 1, Number of References : 13

  Publication Details

Human Heredity (International Journal of Human and Medical Genetics)

Vol. 60, No. 4, Year 2005 (Cover Date: February 2006)

Journal Editor: Devoto, M. (Philadelphia, Pa.)
ISSN: 0001-5652 (print), 1423-0062 (Online)

For additional information: http://www.karger.com/HHE

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