Pathway analysis following association study

BMC Proceedings

Proceedings

Julius S Ngwa¹  Alisa K Manning¹  Chen Lu¹  Wei V Zhuang¹  Anita L DeStefano²  Jonna L Grimsby³ 

[1] Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Boston University, 715 Albany Street, 02118, Boston, MA, USA;Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Boston University, 715 Albany Street, 02118, Boston, MA, USA;Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Concord Street, 02118, Boston, MA, USA;General Medicine Division, Massachusetts General Hospital; and Harvard Medical School, 250 Longwood Avenue, 02115, Boston, MA, USA;

关键词: Pathway Analysis;    Ingenuity Pathway Analysis;    Common SNPs;    Focus Gene;    Ingenuity Pathway Analysis Software;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1753-6561-5-S9-S18

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Genome-wide association studies often emphasize single-nucleotide polymorphisms with the smallest p-values with less attention given to single-nucleotide polymorphisms not ranked near the top. We suggest that gene pathways contain valuable information that can enable identification of additional associations. We used gene set information to identify disease-related pathways using three methods: gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), empirical enrichment p-values, and Ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA). Association tests were performed for common single-nucleotide polymorphisms and aggregated rare variants with traits Q1 and Q4. These pathway methods were evaluated by type I error, power, and the ranking of the VEGF pathway, the gene set used in the simulation model. GSEA and IPA had high power for detecting the VEGF pathway for trait Q1 (91.2% and 93%, respectively). These two methods were conservative with deflated type I errors (0.0083 and 0.0072, respectively). The VEGF pathway ranked 1 or 2 in 123 of 200 replicates using IPA and ranked among the top 5 in 114 of 200 replicates for GSEA. The empirical enrichment method had lower power and higher type I error. Thus pathway analysis approaches may be useful in identifying biological pathways that influence disease outcomes.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Ngwa et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011