Statistical test increases power of genetic studies of complex disease

The power of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to detect genetic influences on human disease can be substantially increased using a statistical testing framework. Despite the proliferation of GWAS, the associations found so far have largely failed to account for the known effects of genes on complex disease -- the problem of "missing heritability." Standard approaches also struggle to find combinations of multiple genes that affect disease risk in complex ways (known as genetic interactions). The new framework enhances the ability to detect genetic associations and interactions by taking advantage of data from other genomic studies of the same population.

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