title: Assessing and managing risk when sharing aggregate genetic variant data.
abstract: Access to genetic data across studies is an important aspect of identifying new genetic associations through genome-wide association studies (GWASs). Meta-analysis across multiple GWASs with combined cohort sizes of tens of thousands of individuals often uncovers many more genome-wide associated loci than the original individual studies; this emphasizes the importance of tools and mechanisms for data sharing. However, even sharing summary-level data, such as allele frequencies, inherently carries some degree of privacy risk to study participants. Here we discuss mechanisms and resources for sharing data from GWASs, particularly focusing on approaches for assessing and quantifying the privacy risks to participants that result from the sharing of summary-level data.
authors.affiliation: Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Phoenix, Arizona 85004, USA. dcraig@tgen.org
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Craig
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Goor
authors.forename: Zhenyuan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Paschall
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ostell
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Feolo
authors.forename: Stephen T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Sherry
authors.forename: Teri A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Manolio
mesh_terms: D015331:Cohort Studies; D003219:Confidentiality; D003625:Data Collection / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000502:physiology; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000379:methods*; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D018570:Risk Assessment