A Bayesian method for identifying genetic interactions.

An important challenge in the analysis of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data is the identification of SNPs that interact in a nonlinear fashion in their association with disease. Such epistatic interactions among genetic variants at multiple loci likely underlie the inheritance of common diseases. We have developed a novel method called the Bayesian combinatorial method (BCM) for detecting combination of genetic variants that are predictive of disease. When compared with the multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR), a widely used combinatorial method, BCM has significantly greater power to detect interactions and is computationally more efficient.