Nature Communications (Jan 2019)

Apparent latent structure within the UK Biobank sample has implications for epidemiological analysis

  • Simon Haworth,
  • Ruth Mitchell,
  • Laura Corbin,
  • Kaitlin H. Wade,
  • Tom Dudding,
  • Ashley Budu-Aggrey,
  • David Carslake,
  • Gibran Hemani,
  • Lavinia Paternoster,
  • George Davey Smith,
  • Neil Davies,
  • Daniel J. Lawson,
  • Nicholas J. Timpson

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08219-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Population structure can bias the results of genetic and epidemiological analysis. Here, Haworth et al. report that fine-scale structure is detectable in apparently homogeneous samples such as ALSPAC when measured very precisely, and remains detectable in UK Biobank despite conventional approaches to account for it.