Figure 1.

Disease genetics vs. disease-causing trait genetics for the identification of drug targets

Instead of focusing on disease genetics, genetics of disease-causing traits has three advantages. First, disease-causing traits are often more likely to be associated with known druggable targets such as enzymes or receptors. Second, unlike a disease-associated gene, the function and, from there, causality of a gene for a trait is easier to verify. Third, the sample size of trait datasets is far greater than that of datasets containing cases and controls specifically for COVID-19.