Genotype relative-risks and association tests for nuclear families with missing parental data

Abstract

The development of a new method for testing the association of genetic markers with disease is presented. This approach is applicable when sampling nuclear families with one or more affected siblings and when neither, one, or both parents are missing marker genotype data. All siblings, affected and not affected, are used to probabilistically infer the missing parental marker data. A likelihood ratio statistic, which treats marker allele frequencies as nuisance parameters, is presented to test whether all marker relative risks are equal to one (i.e., no marker association). This approach offers a solution to test for marker associations when parents are difficult to obtain.