Washington University School of Medicine Digital Commons@Becker Open Access Publications 2005 Genetic epidemiology of diabetes M. Alan Permutt Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Jonathon Wasson Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Nancy Cox University of Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/open_access_pubs Recommended Citation Permutt, M. Alan; Wasson, Jonathon; and Cox, Nancy, ,"Genetic epidemiology of diabetes." The ourJ nal of Clinical Investigation.,. 1431-1439. (2005). https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/open_access_pubs/1460 This Open Access Publication is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons@Becker. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Becker. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Downloaded on June 9, 2013. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. More information at www.jci.org/articles/view/24758 Review series Genetic epidemiology of diabetes M. Alan Permutt,1 Jonathon Wasson,1 and Nancy Cox2 1Department of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipid Research, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. 2Department of Human Genetics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Conventional genetic analysis focuses on the genes that account for specific phenotypes, while traditional epide- miology is more concerned with the environmental causes and risk factors related to traits. Genetic epidemiology is an alliance of the 2 fields that focuses on both genetics, including allelic variants in different populations, and environment, in order to explain exactly how genes convey effects in different environmental contexts and to arrive at a more complete comprehension of the etiology of complex traits.