Re-analysis and meta-analysis of summary statistics from gene-environment interaction studies.

Bioinformatics (Oxford, England)
Authors
Abstract

MOTIVATION: statistics from genome-wide association studies enable many valuable downstream analyses that are more efficient than individual-level data analysis while also reducing privacy concerns. As growing sample sizes enable better-powered analysis of gene-environment interactions, there is a need for gene-environment interaction-specific methods that manipulate and use summary statistics.RESULTS: We introduce two tools to facilitate such analysis, with a focus on statistical models containing multiple gene-exposure and/or gene-covariate interaction terms. REGEM (RE-analysis of GEM summary statistics) uses summary statistics from a single, multi-exposure genome-wide interaction study to derive analogous sets of summary statistics with arbitrary sets of exposures and interaction covariate adjustments. METAGEM (META-analysis of GEM summary statistics) extends current fixed-effects meta-analysis models to incorporate multiple exposures from multiple studies. We demonstrate the value and efficiency of these tools by exploring alternative methods of accounting for ancestry-related population stratification in genome-wide interaction study in the UK Biobank as well as by conducting a multi-exposure genome-wide interaction study meta-analysis in cohorts from the diabetes-focused ProDiGY consortium. These programs help to maximize the value of summary statistics from diverse and complex gene-environment interaction studies.AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: REGEM and METAGEM are open-source projects freely available at and .

Year of Publication
2023
Journal
Bioinformatics (Oxford, England)
Volume
39
Issue
12
Date Published
12/2023
ISSN
1367-4811
DOI
10.1093/bioinformatics/btad730
PubMed ID
38039147
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