ABSTRACT
With the formation of international consortia to investigate complex disorders and a variety of cancers, meta-analysis has become a valuable tool to combine linkage results and narrow chromosomal regions of interest. However, between-study heterogeneity, which may include different marker maps, marker informativity, sample sizes, phenotype definition, ascertainment schemes, and statistical tests for linkage, can be problematic in meta-analysis. The presumed etiology of a complex disease is a combination of effects from multiple genes and the environment.
