HYST: a hybrid set-based test for genome-wide association studies, with application to protein-protein interaction-based association analysis

Am J Hum Genet. 2012 Sep 7;91(3):478-88. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.08.004.

Abstract

The extended Simes' test (known as GATES) and scaled chi-square test were proposed to combine a set of dependent genome-wide association signals at multiple single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for assessing the overall significance of association at the gene or pathway levels. The two tests use different strategies to combine association p values and can outperform each other when the number of and linkage disequilibrium between SNPs vary. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid set-based test (HYST) combining the two tests for genome-wide association studies (GWASs). We describe how HYST can be used to evaluate statistical significance for association at the protein-protein interaction (PPI) level in order to increase power for detecting disease-susceptibility genes of moderate effect size. Computer simulations demonstrated that HYST had a reasonable type 1 error rate and was generally more powerful than its parents and other alternative tests to detect a PPI pair where both genes are associated with the disease of interest. We applied the method to three complex disease GWAS data sets in the public domain; the method detected a number of highly connected significant PPI pairs involving multiple confirmed disease-susceptibility genes not found in the SNP- and gene-based association analyses. These results indicate that HYST can be effectively used to examine a collection of predefined SNP sets based on prior biological knowledge for revealing additional disease-predisposing genes of modest effects in GWASs.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Genetic Predisposition to Disease*
  • Genome-Wide Association Study / methods*
  • HapMap Project
  • Humans
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Protein Interaction Maps