Epidemiologic and Genetic Approaches in the Study of Gene-Environment Interaction: an Overview of Available Methods

• Published in: Epidemiologic reviews Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 137 - 147
• Main Authors: Andrieu, N., Goldstein, A. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cary, NC Oxford University Press 1998
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Environment; Epidemiologic Research Design; Epidemiology; Family; Genetic Linkage; Genetic Predisposition to Disease; Humans; Medical sciences; Molecular Epidemiology; Tumors; Twin Studies as Topic; France; Europe; Human; Health and environment; Genotype environment interaction; Methodology; Review; Malignant tumor; Epidemiology; Public health
• ISSN: 0193-936X; 1478-6729
• DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.epirev.a017976

Gene-environment studies are motivated by different situations including: 1) The detection of major genes that do not have estimated lifetime risks that reach 100 percent. 2) The identification of gene-environment interaction as a common biologic process in pharmacogenetic studies of complex diseases. 3) Inconsistent associations across studies between a disease and a suspected risk factor; one reason for the inconsistencies is that relevant risk factors may be difficult to detect, possibly due to heterogeneity in the studied populations. In this presentation we review methods to detect gene-environment interactions according to whether or not a surrogate/actual measure of the genetic factor(s) is(are) available. Interaction is a model-dependent concept and needs to be defined accordingly. For example, a gene-environment interaction exists if the joint effect of the genetic factor and the environmental exposure differs from the product of the risks for the individual factors on a multiplicative scale, and from the sum of the background disease rate and the excess rates for the environmental exposure and for the genetic factor on an additive scale.