Nature Communications (Feb 2020)

Exploiting horizontal pleiotropy to search for causal pathways within a Mendelian randomization framework

  • Yoonsu Cho,
  • Philip C. Haycock,
  • Eleanor Sanderson,
  • Tom R. Gaunt,
  • Jie Zheng,
  • Andrew P. Morris,
  • George Davey Smith,
  • Gibran Hemani

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14452-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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In Mendelian randomization (MR) studies, one typically selects SNPs as instrumental variables that do not directly affect the outcome to avoid violation of MR assumptions. Here, Cho et al. present a framework, MR-TRYX, that leverages knowledge of such outliers of horizontal pleiotropy to identify putative causal relationships between exposure and outcome.