Gencrypt: one-way cryptographic hashes to detect overlapping individuals across samples

Bioinformatics. 2012 Mar 15;28(6):886-8. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/bts045. Epub 2012 Feb 1.

Abstract

Meta-analysis across genome-wide association studies is a common approach for discovering genetic associations. However, in some meta-analysis efforts, individual-level data cannot be broadly shared by study investigators due to privacy and Institutional Review Board concerns. In such cases, researchers cannot confirm that each study represents a unique group of people, leading to potentially inflated test statistics and false positives. To resolve this problem, we created a software tool, Gencrypt, which utilizes a security protocol known as one-way cryptographic hashes to allow overlapping participants to be identified without sharing individual-level data.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Confidentiality
  • Ethics Committees, Research
  • Genome-Wide Association Study*
  • Humans
  • Meta-Analysis as Topic*
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Software*