Fulfilling the promise of Mendelian randomization

Joseph Pickrell
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/018150

Many important questions in medicine involve questions about causality, For example, do low levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) cause heart disease? Does high body mass index (BMI) cause type 2 diabetes? Or are these traits simply correlated in the population for other reasons? A popular approach to answering these problems using human genetics is called “Mendelian randomization”. We discuss the prospects and limitations of this approach, and some ways forward.