Genome-wide association analysis identifies genetic variations in subjects with ME/CFS

[msf]

Re: Davey Smith´s comment about there not being much info on the controls, there is as much info on them as there is on patients, which is to say, not that much. It would have been more accurate to say that there was not much info on the study population.

If you were a someone important like Davey Smith, isn´t this something you could ask the authors for?

 

[Simon]

Nearly all Based on what I see in current non-ME/CFS SNP research papers, I disagree with the conclusion that most of it got cleaned up 10 years ago.

Or maybe it was just that good stuff started being done then, and the dross continued regardless? For n=40 studies like this, you don't have to go the big funders like Wellcome who would insist on a different approach.

 

[wastwater]

Is this the basis for a partial T cell immunodeficiency

 

[msf]

RE: the likelihood of the significant SNPs occuring in genes that play a role in the immune system through false association, I just realised that it´s more unlikely than I thought, since it´s not 6 out of 12 statistically significant SNPs coding are found in genes that have a role in the immune system, but more like 6 out of 7, since 5 of the statistically significant coding SNPs result are synonymous.

I´m no statistician, but it seems very unlikely to me that this pattern would occur through false association.

 

[serg1942]

Wow!!!! This is great, thanks for posting! I will read it again tomorrow more thoroughly. It seems to me that they have found what it was expected to find. These results open the way for new and specific drugs and other treatments to come as well as to new "study approaches".

This is probably one of the most important studies in the history of ME/CFS. It is not showing that ME/CFS is a genetic disease (all diseases are genetic by default); it is confirming that ME/CFS is a real disease, and acquired due to genetic predisposition (as all diseases occur). In other words, an infection or a toxic, for instance, could cause cancer in one individual, an autoimmune disorder in another, and ME/CFS in another...

BTW, as far as I understand, the "non coding regions" are no longer understood as "trash DNA". Actually it is believed to play essential and mostly unknown roles.

Best!
Sergio

 

[Simon]

Well, here's the view of an independent expert on genomics, George Davey Smith, who spoke at the recent CMRC conference. In the past he's criticised the whole way gene asssociation studies have been overinterpreted: not someone who's afraid to speak his mind:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/698117629404450816

GDS>
@sjmnotes @IamClarkEllis now had chance to look at it,surprised it was published with no replication sample or adequate details of controls

This is a fascinating blog that focues on fMRI/MRI studies but explicitly covers genetic asssociation studies too
Wiring the Brain: On literature pollution and cottage-industry science

Much of this reads to me like a generic critique of mecfs research. This point about needing a replication sample echoes what Goerge Davey Smith was saying about this study:

... and lack of a replication sample (to test directly, with exactly the same methodology, whether the findings from the study were robust, prior to bothering anyone else with them).