Gencrypt: one-way cryptographic hashes to detect overlapping individuals across samples.
Meta-analysis across genome-wide association studies is a common approach for discovering genetic associations. However, in some meta-analysis efforts, individual-level data cannot be broadly shared by study investigators due to privacy and Institutional Review Board concerns. In such cases, researchers cannot confirm that each study represents a unique group of people, leading to potentially inflated test statistics and false positives. To resolve this problem, we created a software tool, Gencrypt, which utilizes a security protocol known as one-way cryptographic hashes to allow overlapping participants to be identified without sharing individual-level data.
Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Michael C
MC
Turchin
Joel N
JN
Hirschhorn
D000465:Algorithms; D003219:Confidentiality; D028744:Ethics Committees, Research; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D012984:Software