Power of Microbiome Beta-Diversity Analyses Based on Standard Reference Samples.

Power of Microbiome Beta-Diversity Analyses Based on Standard Reference Samples. Am J Epidemiol. 2020 Sep 25;: Authors: Gail MH, Wan Y, Shi J Abstract A simple method to analyze microbiome beta-diversity computes mean beta-diversity distances from a test sample to standard reference samples. We used reference stool and nasal samples from the Human Microbiome Project and regressed an outcome on mean distances (2df-test) or additionally on squares and cross-product of mean distances (5df-test). We compared the power of 2df- and 5df-tests to the microbiome regression-based kernel association test (MiRKAT). In simulations, MiRKAT had moderately greater power than the 2df-test for discriminating skin versus saliva and skin versus nasal samples, but differences were negligible for skin versus stool and stool versus nasal samples. The 2df-test had slightly greater power than MiRKAT for Dirichlet-Multinomial samples. In associating body mass index with beta-diversity in stool samples from the American Gut Project, the 5df-test yielded smaller p-values than MiRKAT for most taxonomic levels and beta-diversity measures. Unlike procedures like MiRKAT that are based on the beta-diversity matrix, mean distances to reference samples can be analyzed with standard statistical tools and shared or meta-analyzed without sharing primary DNA data. Our data indicate that standard reference tests have comparable power to MiRKAT (and to permutational multiva...
Source: Am J Epidemiol - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Tags: Am J Epidemiol Source Type: research