STATISTICAL METHODS FOR GENETICS EPIDEMIOLOGY

这笔赠款的目的是开发和实施新的统计方法 用于复杂慢性病遗传流行病学研究的方法学 癌症、冠心病、过敏等疾病，以及 精神疾病。重点将放在统计学的发展上 实现以下目标的方法： (I)分析在以下情况下频繁出现的多变量生存数据 收集家庭数据以检测家庭聚集性并识别 发病年龄较晚的疾病的遗传亚型； (Ii)包含遗传异质性和诊断模糊性(或 误诊)进入遗传连锁数据分析； (3)处理与使用 相对较新的检测基因的方法--区间作图法 联动。 就每一项具体目标，我们会： (A)评估现有的统计方法，并指出所处的位置和 这些方法可能失败的程度， (B)从分析和经验两方面开发和研究新方法 与上述问题相适应， (C)将这些方法应用于各种复杂的实际数据集 推动这项拟议研究的疾病。 这里提出的工作将对统计方法论做出贡献 一般的遗传流行病学领域，并提供对每个 各种数据集所代表的临床领域以说明 这些新方法。

The objective of this grant is to develop and implement new statistical methodology useful for genetic epidemiologic studies of complex chronic diseases such as cancer, coronary heart disease, allergy, as well as psychiatric illness. The focus will be on the development of statistical methods for: (I) analyzing multivariate survival data which occurs frequently when family data are collected to detect familial aggregation and to identify genetic subtypes of diseases with a late age-of-onset; (II) incorporating genetic heterogeneity and diagnostic ambiguity (or misdiagnosis) into the analysis of genetic linkage data; (III) addressing some statistical issues concerning the use of a relatively new method, the interval mapping method, to detect genetic linkage. For each of the specific aims, we will: (A) evaluate existing statistical methods and point out the place and the extent to which these methods may break down, (B) develop and study both analytically and empirically, new methods appropriate to the issues addressed above, (C) apply these methods to actual data sets of a variety of complex diseases which have motivated this proposed research. The work proposed here will both contribute statistical methodology to the field of genetic epidemiology in general, and offer insight into each of the clinical areas represented by the various data sets to illustrate these new methods.