title: A simple nonparametric test for linkage with sib-pair censored event time observations.
abstract: Consider the case that individual phenotype and genotype observations were collected from a large or moderate number of pedigrees. Some of the pedigrees have multi-generation nuclear families. For each nuclear family, the phenotype trait value of each sibling is the time to onset for a specific event (e.g., disease). Often, this event time may be right censored, that is, an individual is event-free at the study examination time point. In this article, we propose a purely nonparametric test for testing if the distribution of a Haseman-Elston distance measure between two siblings' event times is independent of their mean genetic sharing identical by descent at a genetic marker based on such incomplete observations from all the nuclear families. The new test can be implemented easily and is illustrated with a data set from the Genetic Analysis Workshop 12. The validity of the new test is examined via a simulation study.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Clinical Programming, Schering-Plough Research Institute, Kenilworth, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D008040:Genetic Linkage; D006801:Humans; D035781:Siblings; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric