Commentary: Proxy gene-by-environment Mendelian randomization for assessing causal effects of maternal exposures on offspring outcomes

There is considerable interest in using the principles of Mendelian randomization (MR) to examine the causal effect of maternal environmental exposures (especially during pregnancy) on offspring health related outcomes. However, using MR in this context is challenging for a number of reasons, including the fact that traditional MR analyses require large numbers of mother –offspring pairs, where at the very least, the mothers and children have been genotyped and phenotype information has been gathered on the children. A major challenge in applying MR in these situations is that across the world there is a paucity of large-scale epidemiological datasets with genome- wide genotyped mother–offspring pairs. To overcome this problem, Yanget al. have developed a new method which they call proxy gene-by-environment MR1 that builds on previous work in this space.2,3
Source: International Journal of Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research