A brief comparison of polygenic risk scores and Mendelian randomisation

Abstract

Mendelian randomisation and polygenic risk score analysis have become increasingly popular in the last decade due to the advent of large-scale genome-wide association studies. Each approach has valuable applications, some of which are overlapping, yet there are important differences which we describe here.

Keywords: Genome-wide association studies; Horizontal pleiotropy; Mendelian randomisation; Polygenic risk scores.