Drinking from the Fire Hose — Statistical Issues in Genomewide Association Studies

Abstract

The past 3 months have seen the publication of a series of studies examining the inherited genetic underpinnings of common diseases such as prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, and in this issue of the Journal, coronary artery disease (reported by Samani et al., pages 443–453). These genomewide association studies have been able to examine interpatient differences in inherited genetic variability at an unprecedented level of resolution, thanks to the development of microarrays, or chips, capable of assessing more than 500,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a single sample. This “SNP-chip” technology capitalizes on a catalogue of common human genetic variations that . . .