News Releases & Announcements
Medical journals carry uOttawa professor’s initiative for bridging gap in reporting of genetic-association studies
OTTAWA, February 3, 2009 — Several high-profile medical journals are publishing the results of a recent initiative led by University of Ottawa professor Julian Little, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, and designed to enhance the transparency of reporting in genetic-association studies — performed to determine whether a genetic variant is associated with a disease or trait.
The Annals of Internal Medicine; the European Journal of Epidemiology; the European Journal of Clinical Investigation; Genetic Epidemiology; Human Genetics; the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, as well as PLoS Medicine featured the Dr. Little’s paper on STrengthening the REporting of Genetic Association studies (STREGA). The STREGA initiative builds on the STROBE Statement (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology), a list of recommendations and guidelines supported by the community of scientists who conduct observational studies in epidemiology and share their results. Although similarities exist between genetic-association studies and “classical” observational epidemiology studies, STREGA enriches 12 of the 22 items on the STROBE checklist to heighten transparency in the conduct, appraisal and reporting of genetic associations.
The publication of Dr. Little’s statement comes at a time when experts in the field are faced with a high volume of reports linking genes with common illness, but have difficulty making sense of the information. One of these reasons is that scientific reports are often not transparent on simple things such as how a study subject was selected or what statistical methods were used to arrive at a conclusion. “Those in the STREGA initiative are delighted that these journals have taken a lead in promoting increased transparency of reporting of genetic-association studies. This is a large field of research which has created a great deal of debate between those who expect genetic information to transform medicine and health, and those who are skeptical,” says Julian Little, who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Genome Epidemiology. “We hope that this initiative will help specialists and non-specialists alike to figure out the factors in methods that help produce solid evidence on which to use genetic information,” he adds.
For more information on the STREGA Statement please visit the uOttawa Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine website.
Dr. Little’s project has received grant support from the Institutes of Genetics and of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Genome Canada; Biotechnology, Genomics and Population Health Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada; Affymetrix; DNA Genotek; TrialStat!; and GeneSens.
