Invited commentary: from genome-wide association studies to gene-environment-wide interaction studies--challenges and opportunities.
The recent success of genome-wide association studies in finding susceptibility genes for many common diseases presents tremendous opportunities for epidemiologic studies of environmental risk factors. Analysis of gene-environment interactions, included in only a small fraction of epidemiologic studies until now, will begin to accelerate as investigators integrate analyses of genome-wide variation and environmental factors. Nevertheless, considerable methodological challenges are involved in the design and analysis of gene-environment interaction studies. The authors review these issues in the context of evolving methods for assessing interactions and discuss how the current agnostic approach to interrogating the human genome for genetic risk factors could be extended into a similar approach to gene-environment-wide interaction studies of disease occurrence in human populations.
Khoury
Muin J
MJ
National Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30341, USA. muk1@cdc.gov
Wacholder
Sholom
S
D004777:Environment; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D005819:Genetic Markers; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D015894:Genome, Human; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors
D005819:Genetic Markers