Revisiting the Polygenic Additive Liability Model through the Example of Diabetes Mellitus.

Most studies on multifactorial diseases are performed under the assumption of a polygenic additive liability. In particular, missing heritability and individual risk scores are estimated under this model. In this paper, we use the example of diabetes to highlight the pitfalls of relying on such a model, when there are reasons to suspect etiological heterogeneity and/or departure from the hypotheses on the environmental factor effects. (C) 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel