Three lectures on case-control genetic association analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this review is to focus on the three most important themes in genetic association studies using randomly selected patients (case, affected) and normal samples (control, unaffected), so that students and researchers alike who are new to this field may quickly grasp the key issues and command basic analysis methods. These three themes are: elementary categorical analysis; disease mutation as an unobserved entity; and the importance of homogeneity in genetic association analysis.