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Case–control association mapping by proxy using family history of disease

Nature Genetics volume 49, pages 325–331 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Collecting cases for case–control genetic association studies can be time-consuming and expensive. In some situations (such as studies of late-onset or rapidly lethal diseases), it may be more practical to identify family members of cases. In randomly ascertained cohorts, replacing cases with their first-degree relatives enables studies of diseases that are absent (or nearly absent) in the cohort. We refer to this approach as genome-wide association study by proxy (GWAX) and apply it to 12 common diseases in 116,196 individuals from the UK Biobank. Meta-analysis with published genome-wide association study summary statistics replicated established risk loci and yielded four newly associated loci for Alzheimer's disease, eight for coronary artery disease and five for type 2 diabetes. In addition to informing disease biology, our results demonstrate the utility of association mapping without directly observing cases. We anticipate that GWAX will prove useful in future genetic studies of complex traits in large population cohorts.

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Figure 1: Power of proxy case–control association designs.
Figure 2: Effective sample sizes of case–control versus proxy case–control association designs in the UK Biobank.
Figure 3: Comparison of adjusted odds ratios and previously reported case–control odds ratios at established risk loci for three diseases with publicly available summary statistics.
Figure 4: Manhattan plots of fixed-effects meta-analysis results for Alzheimer's disease, coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Hayeck and J. Jakobsdottir for comments on a draft of this manuscript. J.Z.L. and J.K.P. are partially supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH grant R01MH106842). This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. New York Genome Center, New York, New York, USA

    Jimmy Z Liu, Yaniv Erlich & Joseph K Pickrell

  2. Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Yaniv Erlich

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Joseph K Pickrell

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  1. Jimmy Z Liu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study design and writing, and all approved this manuscript. J.Z.L. performed the statistical analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jimmy Z Liu.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Integrated supplementary information

Supplementary Figure 1 Number of cases and proxy cases required to detect association at α = 5 × 10–8 for case–control and proxy case–control designs.

The ratio of controls to cases (or proxy cases) is 1. We set the disease prevalence (K) to 0.1 and varied the true odds ratio (OR) from 1.1 to 1.5. Each panel shows the equivalent number of cases and proxy cases required across different minor allele frequencies (MAFs). Across values of K (data only shown for K = 0.1), MAF and OR, the ratio of true cases to proxy cases was ~4 when proxy cases and controls are perfectly classified (red line). When 10% of controls consist of misclassified proxy cases, the ratio increases to ~4.9 (blue line).

Supplementary Figure 2 Relationship between adjusted ORs and directly observed ORs across the allele frequency spectrum.

The x axis denotes OR estimated directly from case–control association testing when cases consist entirely of individuals with one parent (or one full sibling) affected with a disease. The y axis denotes the adjusted OR such that it is comparable to OR estimated directly using true cases and controls.

Supplementary Figure 3 Manhattan plots of primary proxy case–control association analysis results for 12 phenotypes.

Chromosome and positions are plotted on the x axis. Strength of association is plotted on the y axis. The red line corresponds to the genome-wide significant threshold of P < 5 × 10–8. −log10 (P values) are truncated at 40 for illustrative purposes.

Supplementary Figure 4 Mean polygenic risk scores among UK Biobank individuals for Alzheimer's disease, coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes.

Risk scores were calculated using lists of established risk loci and reported effect sizes extracted from publicly available published GWAS summary statistics. Error bars denote the 95% confidence intervals of the mean normalized polygenic risk scores. Differences between each pair of risk scores were tested using Welch’s t test. No significant difference between any of the unaffected individuals with two affected parents and 2× unaffected individuals with one affected parent were identified (P > 0.09).

Supplementary Figure 5 Regional association plots of four novel Alzheimer’s disease risk loci.

The coordinates on the x axis are GRCh37. SNPs are plotted according to their base-pair position and strength of association. The color of each point indicates the degree of linkage disequilibrium with the index SNP (in blue).

Supplementary Figure 6 Regional association plots of eight novel coronary artery disease risk loci.

SNPs are plotted according to their base-pair position and strength of association. The color of each point indicates the degree of linkage disequilibrium with the index SNP (in blue).

Supplementary Figure 7 Regional association plots of five novel type 2 diabetes risk loci.

SNPs are plotted according to their base-pair position and strength of association. The color of each point indicates the degree of linkage disequilibrium with the index SNP (in blue).

Supplementary Figure 8 Quantile–quantile plot and genomic inflation of primary proxy case–control association analysis results for 12 phenotypes.

The dashed red line corresponds to y = x.

Supplementary Figure 9 Quantile–quantile plot, genomic inflation and LD score regression intercepts of fixed-effects meta-analysis results for four phenotypes.

The dashed red line corresponds to y = x.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1–9, Supplementary Tables 1, 3 and 5, and Supplementary Note (PDF 2539 kb)

Supplementary Tables 2 and 4

Supplementary Tables 2 and 4 (XLSX 74 kb)

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Liu, J., Erlich, Y. & Pickrell, J. Case–control association mapping by proxy using family history of disease. Nat Genet 49, 325–331 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3766

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