Exactly how variants at the genotype level work together to influence disease risk has been largely ignored. This is the first tool that helps identify and then characterize variant-variant interactions at a genome-wide level.
Most of what we know about the genetic factors identified from Parkinson's disease genome-wide association studies comes from studies that treat these factors as acting independently to increase Parkinson's disease risk. These studies ignore the possibility that genetic variants may be working in combination with each other or interact with each other to modify a person's chance of getting the disease.
Significant progress has been made in understanding genetic drivers through previous genome-wide association studies, identifying 94 genetic risk variants, yet they only account for one-third of drivers.
According to Bustos, current genome-wide association studies do not have the large cohort sizes needed to reach the required statistical power to fully characterize interactions between variances.
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