Study has implications for the use of personalized genetic risk in populations with diverse ancestries.Timothy Thornton, associate professor of biostatistics at the UW School of Public Health is senior author and co-authors include Andréa Horimoto, acting instructor of biostatistics and Ellen Wijsman, UW professor of medicine and biostatistics.

In a new study of more than 3,000 Caribbean Hispanics, researchers from the University of Washington found that individuals with African ancestry at a key Alzheimer’s gene had 39 percent lower odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease than individuals with European ancestry at the gene. “The results from our study have important implications for the use of personalized genetic risk in populations with diverse ancestries, even for well-established risk factors,” said senior author Tim Thornton, associate professor of biostatistics at the UW School of Public Health.

Marco Carone, an assistant professor of biostatistics and the Norman Breslow Endowed Faculty Fellow at the University of Washington School of Public Health, recently received a $2.7 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop novel statistical tools to more effectively describe the health effects, both intended and unintended, of common medical therapies using data from electronic health records (EHRs).

Studies by Sarah Nelson (PHG, PhD ’18), a research scientist with the Genetic Analysis Center in the Department of Biostatistics, are cited in a recent Nature News article about a controversial third-party interpretation app based on a genetic study of same-sex sexual behavior. “While the app has since been taken down, it portends a growing trend for app developers to prematurely roll out potentially sensitive science in the interest of interpreting individual genomes,” says Nelson.

UW Biostatistics faculty and Fred Hutch researchers Ross Prentice and Garnet Anderson contribute to this article addressing questions surrounding dietary fat and health

UW Research Professor of Biostatistics Sharon Browning comments on new work from the lab of UW professor of Genome Sciences Evan Eichler.

"When we have positive results, we tend to believe them whether or not we understand the mechanism. If we have a negative result, then we say it's by chance. It's an easy way out," said UW Professor of Biostatistics Susanne May, one of the dissenting votes on the FDA panel.

Read about the new Hans Rosling Center for Population Health which will house Biostatistics faculty, students and administrative staff when it opens in fall 2020.