title: Phenome-Wide Association Studies as a Tool to Advance Precision Medicine.
abstract: Beginning in the early 2000s, the accumulation of biospecimens linked to electronic health records (EHRs) made possible genome-phenome studies (i.e., comparative analyses of genetic variants and phenotypes) using only data collected as a by-product of typical health care. In addition to disease and trait genetics, EHRs proved a valuable resource for analyzing pharmacogenetic traits and developing reverse genetics approaches such as phenome-wide association studies (PheWASs). PheWASs are designed to survey which of many phenotypes may be associated with a given genetic variant. PheWAS methods have been validated through replication of hundreds of known genotype-phenotype associations, and their use has differentiated between true pleiotropy and clinical comorbidity, added context to genetic discoveries, and helped define disease subtypes, and may also help repurpose medications. PheWAS methods have also proven to be useful with research-collected data. Future efforts that integrate broad, robust collection of phenotype data (e.g., EHR data) with purpose-collected research data in combination with a greater understanding of EHR data will create a rich resource for increasingly more efficient and detailed genome-phenome analysis to usher in new discoveries in precision medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37203; email: josh.denny@vanderbilt.edu.|Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37232.
authors.forename: Joshua C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Denny
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37203; email: josh.denny@vanderbilt.edu.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bastarache
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37203; email: josh.denny@vanderbilt.edu.|Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37232.|Department of Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37232.
authors.forename: Dan M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Roden
mesh_terms: D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D015894:Genome, Human / Q000235:genetics; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D057285:Precision Medicine / Q000639:trends*
keywords: electronic health record; genome-wide association study; phenome-wide association study; phenotyping