Courses in Genetic Epidemiology

Genome wide association analysis is a new approach to study the genetics of multifactorial disorders, that has yielded spectacular successes in discovery of genes involved in complex disorders such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and age related macular degeneration. Recent developments in genotyping technology have facilitated researchers to incorporate these analyses into large genetic, clinical and epidemiological studies.

This course aims to introduce epidemiologists, molecular biologists and clinicians into the basic principles of genome wide association analysis. The course addresses the state of the art of techniques for data handling, quality control, data analysis of single and multiple markers, gene interactions and adjustments for confounding by other determinants of disease and population (sub)structure. Further, issues related to the design of genome wide association analysis are discussed including statistical power and population selection.

Lectures are accompanied by instructive hands-on computer exercises on the analysis of case-control series and quantitative traits using software packages that are available in the public domain such as PLINK, GenABEL and WG_Permer. After completing the course, participants will be able to perform a basic genome association analysis on their desktop PC’s.

Course materials: On flash drive. A laptop is required.