Myra Samuels Memorial Lecture

Family Based Association Tests with Haplotypes

Professor Nan Laird
Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health

Start Date and Time: Thu, 15 Apr 2004, 4:30 PM

End Date and Time: Thu, 15 Apr 2004, 5:30 PM

Venue: MATH 175

Refreshments: Following the Lecture in the Mathematical Sciences Library, 3rd Floor, Mathematical Sciences Building

Abstract:

Family based tests of association are widely used in searching for the genetic basis of disorders. Much of the literature deals with the construction of unbiased tests when dealing with a single marker; the marker values of parents may be missing, but that of the offspring is assumed to be fully observed. It is increasingly common to use haplotypes composed of multiple markers in tests of association. With haplotypes, missing information can arise in both parents and offspring. One approach to dealing with missing phase and/or parental genotype information relies on using estimated probabilities for parental and offspring haplotypes to construct weighted tests (Clayton, AJHG,1999). A pure conditioning approach is described that can accommodate both lack of phase and incomplete genotyping in parents and/or offspring. The conditioning approach yields unbiased tests, but may discard considerable information if phase cannot be resolved. We will propose a weighted conditional approach that combines the best features of both approaches.