Dr. Bailey-Wilson is collaborating with Dr. Barbara Klein on analyses of existing family data from the Beaver Dam Eye Study. In this study, a private census of the town and township of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin was performed and all individuals between the ages of 43-84 were asked to enroll, were given extensive eye examinations and asked to fill out a questionnaire that measures environmental risk factor exposures. Of the 5925 eligible people, 4926 (83.1%) participated. Within this dataset, there are 1,247 people from 564 sibships with at least 2 members in each sibship having complete age, sex and examination results. These families represent an outstanding data resource for examining major genetic components to various eye diseases. In the past, we have examined familial correlations of many of the quantitative eye measurements. In this fiscal year, we have performed power analyses of the nuclear cataract and cortical cataract traits to determine whether adequate power for linkage studies of these traits exists in this data set. We have also performed segregation analyses of these two traits. Results have been presented at the recent meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics and manuscripts are in preparation to present these results. In the future, we plan to perform additional power analyses and segregation analyses of other possibly genetic traits available in these data. We are also in the process of expanding this project to include linkage and association studies in these data.
