Cryptic relatedness
Presence of undetected relatedness between subjects in genetic association studies
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In population genetics, cryptic relatedness occurs when individuals in a genetic association study are more closely related to another population than assumed by the investigators. This can act as a confounding factor in both case-control and genome-wide association studies,[1][2] as well as in studies of genetic diversity. Along with population stratification, it is one of the most prominent confounding factors that can lead to inflated false positive rates in gene-association studies.[3][4] It is often corrected for by including a polygenic component in the statistical model being used to detect genetic associations.[5] Other approaches that have been developed to attempt to control for cryptic relatedness are the genomic control method and the use of extended likelihood ratio tests.[6]
