Abstract
Many important questions in medicine involve questions about causality, For example, do low levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) cause heart disease? Does high body mass index (BMI) cause type 2 diabetes? Or are these traits simply correlated in the population for other reasons? A popular approach to answering these problems using human genetics is called "Mendelian randomization". We discuss the prospects and limitations of this approach, and some ways forward.
Keywords
Mendelian randomizationCausality (physics)Mendelian inheritanceDiseaseCausal inferenceBody mass indexPopulationMedicineGeneticsBiologyInternal medicineGenetic variantsPathologyGene
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Publication Info
- Year
- 2015
- Type
- preprint
- Citations
- 24
- Access
- Closed
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Cite This
Joseph K. Pickrell
(2015).
Fulfilling the promise of Mendelian randomization.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
.
https://doi.org/10.1101/018150
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1101/018150