Analytical Methods for Disease Association Studies with Immunogenetic Data

Disease association studies involving highly polymorphic immunogenetic data may involve analyses at one or many units of analysis, including amino acid, allele, genotype and haplotype levels, as well as consideration of gene–gene or gene–environment interactions. The selection of the appropriate statistical tests is critical and will be dependent on the nature of the dataset (e.g., case-control vs. family data) as well as the specific research hypotheses being tested. This paper describes the various study and analysis categories used for such analyses, including the advantages and limitations of such techniques.