Journal
ECONOMICS & HUMAN BIOLOGY
Volume 13, Issue -, Pages 99-106Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.002
Keywords
Smoking; Tobacco; Mendelian randomization; Causal inference; Instrumental variable
Funding
- British Heart Foundation
- Cancer Research UK
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Medical Research Council
- National Institute for Health Research under UK Clinical Research Collaboration
- Wellcome Trust [086684]
- Medical Research Council [MR/J01351X/1, G0800612, G0802736, G0600705, MC_UU_12013/1-9]
- European Research Council DEVHEALTH [269874]
- Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Oak Foundation
- NIH [R01 ES017876]
- MRC [G0802736, G0600705, MR/J01351X/1, MC_UU_12013/1, MR/K023233/1, MC_UU_12013/6, MC_UU_12013/9, G0800612] Funding Source: UKRI
- Economic and Social Research Council [ES/G007489/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Medical Research Council [G0600705, G0802736, MR/J01351X/1, MC_UU_12013/6, MC_UU_12013/9, MR/K023195/1B, G0800612, MC_UU_12013/1, MR/K023195/1, MR/K023233/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- European Research Council (ERC) [269874] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Mendelian randomization methods, which use genetic variants as instrumental variables for exposures of interest to overcome problems of confounding and reverse causality, are becoming widespread for assessing causal relationships in epidemiological studies. The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how results can be biased if researchers select genetic variants on the basis of their association with the exposure in their own dataset, as often happens in candidate gene analyses. This can lead to estimates that indicate apparent causal relationships, despite there being no true effect of the exposure. In addition, we discuss the potential bias in estimates of magnitudes of effect from Mendelian randomization analyses when the measured exposure is a poor proxy for the true underlying exposure. We illustrate these points with specific reference to tobacco research. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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