Weighted Median

Author

Gibran Hemani

Published

April 7, 2016

Resources

Code (Language: R) Website Paper (Pub Date: 2016-04-07)

Other URLS: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/MendelianRandomization/index.html

Method Contact: Jack Bowden ( J.Bowden2@exeter.ac.uk)

Entry Contact: Gibran Hemani ( g.hemani@bristol.ac.uk)

Context

Analysis Type: UVMR MVMR Network MR Bi-Directional MR Non-Linear

Input Data Types: Ind/Ind Ind/SS SS/Ind SS/SSfamily

Exposure Trait Types: Quantitative Binary Time to event

Outcome Trait Types: Quantitative Binary Time to event

Assumptions and Sources of Bias

Source of Bias Addressed
Weak instruments
Winner’s curse
Sample overlap
Uncorrelated horizontal pleiotropy
Correlated horizontal pleiotropy
Ancestry differences in samples
Residual confounding in GWAS
Cross-trait assortative mating
Index-event/conditioning on heritable trait

Description

A novel weighted median estimator for combining data on multiple genetic variants into a single causal estimate. This estimator is consistent even when up to 50% of the information comes from invalid instrumental variables. In a simulation analysis, it is shown to have better finite-sample Type 1 error rates than the inverse-variance weighted method, and is complementary to the recently proposed MR-Egger (Mendelian randomization-Egger) regression method.