Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
18197190
TITLE
Within-family outliers: segregating alleles or environmental effects? A linkage analysis of height from 5815 sibling pairs.
ABSTRACT
Most information in linkage analysis for quantitative traits comes from pairs of relatives that are phenotypically most discordant or concordant. Confounding this, within-family outliers from non-genetic causes may create false positives and negatives. We investigated the influence of within-family outliers empirically, using one of the largest genome-wide linkage scans for height. The subjects were drawn from Australian twin cohorts consisting of 8447 individuals in 2861 families, providing a total of 5815 possible pairs of siblings in sibships. A variance component linkage analysis was performed, either including or excluding the within-family outliers. Using the entire dataset, the largest LOD scores were on chromosome 15q (LOD 2.3) and 11q (1.5). Excluding within-family outliers increased the LOD score for most regions, but the LOD score on chromosome 15 decreased from 2.3 to 1.2, suggesting that the outliers may create false negatives and false positives, although rare alleles of large effect may also be an explanation. Several regions suggestive of linkage to height were found after removing the outliers, including 1q23.1 (2.0), 3q22.1 (1.9) and 5q32 (2.3). We conclude that the investigation of the effect of within-family outliers, which is usually neglected, should be a standard quality control measure in linkage analysis for complex traits and may reduce the noise for the search of common variants of modest effect size as well as help identify rare variants of large effect and clinical significance. We suggest that the effect of within-family outliers deserves further investigation via theoretical and simulation studies.
DATE PUBLISHED
2008 Apr
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
aheadofprint 2008/01/16
pubmed 2008/01/17 09:00
medline 2008/05/30 09:00
entrez 2008/01/17 09:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Benyamin B Benyamin Beben B Genetic Epidemiology, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia. bebenB@qimr.edu.au
Perola M Perola Markus M
Cornes BK Cornes Belinda K BK
Madden PA Madden Pamela Af PA
Palotie A Palotie Aarno A
Nyholt DR Nyholt Dale R DR
Montgomery GW Montgomery Grant W GW
Peltonen L Peltonen Leena L
Martin NG Martin Nicholas G NG
Visscher PM Visscher Peter M PM
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 16
ISSUE: 4
TITLE: European journal of human genetics : EJHG
ISOABBREVIATION: Eur. J. Hum. Genet.
YEAR: 2008
MONTH: Apr
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 1018-4813
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Eur J Hum Genet
COUNTRY: England
ISSNLINKING: 1018-4813
NLMUNIQUEID: 9302235
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GRANTID AGENCY COUNTRY
AA007535 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA013320 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA013326 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA014041 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA07728 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA10249 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA11998 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
N01-HG-65403 NHGRI NIH HHS United States
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Adolescent
Adult
Alleles
Body Height genetics
Chromosome Mapping genetics
Chromosomes, Human genetics
Environment genetics
Female genetics
Genotype genetics
Humans genetics
Lod Score genetics
Male genetics
Microsatellite Repeats genetics
Quantitative Trait Loci genetics
Siblings genetics
Twins genetics
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's