Risk Alleles for Multiple Sclerosis Identified by a Genomewide Study

Multiple sclerosis has a clinically significant heritable component. We conducted a genomewide association study to identify alleles associated with the risk of multiple sclerosis.

We used DNA microarray technology to identify common DNA sequence variants in 931 family trios (consisting of an affected child and both parents) and tested them for association. For replication, we genotyped another 609 family trios, 2322 case subjects, and 789 control subjects and used genotyping data from two external control data sets. A joint analysis of data from 12,360 subjects was performed to estimate the overall significance and effect size of associations between alleles and the risk of multiple sclerosis.