Hence, discovery of risk factors for the recurrence and metastasis will be of great significance in the prognosis and management of NPC patients.
Acknowledging that the same genetic risk variants can have different phenotypic effects could help inform discovery of risk variants for childhood developmental/psychiatric disorders for which it can be difficult to assemble very large sample sizes.
Since the human genome became available a decade ago, genome-wide association study gradually became the predominant method for the discovery of risk genes/variations, as compared to the traditional target gene/loci approach.
The development and implementation of powerful bioinformatics and biostatistics has been arguably a main driver of recent biobanking successes not only in the discovery of risk factors for common diseases but also in developing 'systems medicine': connecting multiple levels of -omics data and thereby enabling discovery of new biological pathways, disease mechanisms and medications.
As such, a major impediment to progress in the discovery of risk loci for hearing in humans is the lack of control of the many environmental factors that affect hearing during the lifetime, and, to date, only a limited number of large-scale GWAS for hearing phenotypes have been undertaken in humans.
Since the discovery of risk variants in PPARG in 1998, KCNJ11 in 2003, and TCF7L2 in 2006, the emergence of GWAS in 2007 combined with access to large well-powered study populations has quickly expanded the list of validated type 2 diabetes susceptibility alleles [ 14].
High-throughput genotyping and sequencing technologies have enabled rapid discoveries of risk loci and DNA variants associated with human genetic disorders, including hearing loss and balance impairment (1).
The cause of the Vioxx recall -- the discovery of new risks five years after it went on the market -- may also re-energize those who have criticized the way pharmaceutical companies market their treatments directly to consumers.
Their enquiries have led to the discovery of possible risks to the public at several public places in London as well as aboard certain BA aircraft.
Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that comprehensive phenotyping of common ocular traits would enable discovery of genetic risks for secondary traits.
For instance, nefazodone is associated with a low risk of death from hepatic (liver) failure; the discovery of this risk association resulted in the drug's discontinuation in the United States.
