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(Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2002;22:2105.)
© 2002 American Heart Association, Inc.

Letters to the Editor

Genetic Association Studies

Xing Li Wang

Department of Genetics, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, Tex

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

To the Editor:

I am delighted to see that Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology has taken the lead in initiating an open discussion about genetic association studies in such a prominent manner. As correctly pointed out in the editorial by Dr Hegele,¹ the number of publications has exponentially increased in the last decade. Despite the intrinsic problems with this approach, this exponential growth also demonstrates the popularity of this type of study. Anyone who follows the literature in genetic association studies will recognize, as Dr Hegele does, that none of the polymorphisms reported so far has been consistently associated with any phenotypic trait, either a single quantitative trait such as triglyceride level or a complex trait such as atherosclerosis. A typical example is the polymorphisms in endothelial NO synthase,² which has been associated with various vascular diseases in some studies but not in others. Among many reasons for such inconsistent association studies, the importance of controlling for environmental influence should be specifically emphasized because it can modify the phenotypic effect of a given genotype and potentially alter the direction of the association.^3,4 However, we should also not deny the fact that these association studies have stimulated many mechanistic investigations, often from a biochemically unconventional angle, which have the potential for novel findings. While I agree with most criteria set out by Dr Hegele¹ and Drs Almasy and MacCluer,⁵ particularly multi-locus approaches and haplotype analyses, one must be aware that not many research groups have the resources to satisfy them all. This is particularly . . . [Full Text of this Article]