[Application of 'Family-Based Association Test' in studying genetic epidemiology]

To introduce the application of Family-Based Association Test (FBAT) in detecting the association or linkage between marker alleles and phenotype or traits in genetic epidemiology. A brief overview on basic steps involved in design, implementation, principles of application, available software as well as the use and feature of FBAT method, were explained based on data from nuclear family. Advantages of FBAT were compared to conventional genetic statistics approaches. Data showed that this approach might make the most use of parental genotype, genotype of affected offspring and their phenotype to test the association between biallelic or multi-allelic markers, phenotype or traits to their conditional distributions given the minimal sufficient statistics under the null hypothesis for the genetic model. Covariates, such as traits or environmental exposures, might be included into this procedure so as to effectively control the bias of population admixture through adjustment of variables. FBAT could be used for genetic analysis with data from nuclear family since it is more advantageous than the conventional statistical methods.