SNPs and GVHD prediction: where to next?

Abstract

The article by Chien at al in this issue of Blood uses a novel approach to assess the role of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Using a genome-wide association study (GWAS) employing an Affymetrix GeneChip Genome-Wide Human 500 000 SNP array, they screened 1298 allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant donors and recipients and tested whether the results from 40 previously reported candidate SNPs could be replicated. They also used a novel approach to impute data using IMPUTE software (http://nathgen.stats-ox.ac.uk/impute/impute.html) where the genotyping data were not available.1