title: My sister's keeper?: genomic research and the identifiability of siblings.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Genomic sequencing of SNPs is increasingly prevalent, though the amount of familial information these data contain has not been quantified.
  
  
  METHODS
  We provide a framework for measuring the risk to siblings of a patient's SNP genotype disclosure, and demonstrate that sibling SNP genotypes can be inferred with substantial accuracy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Extending this inference technique, we determine that a very low number of matches at commonly varying SNPs is sufficient to confirm sib-ship, demonstrating that published sequence data can reliably be used to derive sibling identities. Using HapMap trio data, at SNPs where one child is homozygotic major, with a minor allele frequency </= 0.20, (N = 452684, 65.1%) we achieve 91.9% inference accuracy for sibling genotypes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings demonstrate that substantial discrimination and privacy risks arise from use of inferred familial genomic data.
authors.affiliation: Children's Hospital Informatics Program at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Boston, MA, USA. cassa@mit.edu
authors.forename: Christopher A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Cassa
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.forename: Isaac S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Kohane
authors.forename: Kenneth D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Mandl