Erschienen in:
01.10.2014 | Commentary
Gene-environment interaction research in psychiatric epidemiology: a framework and implications for study design
verfasst von:
Daniel W. Belsky, Nis Palm Suppli, Salomon Israel
Erschienen in:
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
|
Ausgabe 10/2014
Einloggen, um Zugang zu erhalten
Excerpt
The genetic epidemiology of psychiatric disorders is undergoing a sea change. The flood of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) enabled by the advent of low-cost, high throughput genotyping and the emergence of global consortia to harness the combined power of genome wide data on tens of thousands of individuals is now producing a large volume of discoveries. With these discoveries, hypothesis-free methods of uncovering the genetic roots of psychiatric disorder are overtaking traditional hypothesis-driven approaches. What this transition means for research on gene-environment interactions (GxE) is hotly debated [
1‐
5]. Uher’s review [
6] addresses some of the contours of this debate. Here we seek to contextualize and expand on his points. Our goal is to make some sense of the ongoing conflict in psychiatric genetics between hypothesis-driven genetic research focused on candidate systems and hypothesis-free genetic research focused on data mining of the genome. We think part of the reason that arguments over how to conduct GxE research have grown so acrimonious is a lack of clarity over how genetic measurements are being used in GxE studies. In the paragraphs that follow, we frame the debate over how to conduct GxE research in terms of the substantive questions being asked and discuss implications of this framing for the conduct of GxE research within psychiatric epidemiology. …
