Power and type I error results for a bias-correction approach recently shown to provide accurate odds ratios of genetic variants for the secondary phenotypes associated with primary diseases.

We recently proposed a bias correction approach to evaluate accurate estimation of the odds ratio (OR) of genetic variants associated with a secondary phenotype, in which the secondary phenotype is associated with the primary disease, based on the original case-control data collected for the purpose of studying the primary disease. As reported in this communication, we further investigated the type I error probabilities and powers of the proposed approach, and compared the results to those obtained from logistic regression analysis (with or without adjustment for the primary disease status). We performed a simulation study based on a frequency-matching case-control study with respect to the secondary phenotype of interest. We examined the empirical distribution of the natural logarithm of the corrected OR obtained from the bias correction approach and found it to be normally distributed under the null hypothesis. On the basis of the simulation study results, we found that the logistic regression approaches that adjust or do not adjust for the primary disease status had low power for detecting secondary phenotype associated variants and highly inflated type I error probabilities, whereas our approach was more powerful for identifying the SNP-secondary phenotype associations and had better-controlled type I error probabilities.