Mining the genome for susceptibility to complex neurological disorders

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become increasingly widely used to determine regions of the genome which may contain loci influencing the risk of neurological disorders. While linkage studies have identified genes that cause a number of Mendelian disorders, linkage analysis is less well suited for the more common complex disorders. This has led to the widespread use of GWAS for that purpose. Here we present and discuss several of the major extant GWAS in neurological disorders, their limitations, and implications of findings to date.