Kidney disease progression and collider bias in GWAS.

New genome-wide meta-analysis for longitudinal kidney function decline identified several genetic loci related to kidney disease progression. The study illustrated the complexity of modeling longitudinal traits in genome-wide association studies and highlighted the issue of a collider bias that can be introduced when a kidney disease progression phenotype is adjusted for baseline kidney function. Herein, we briefly outline the key findings of this study, their limitations, and implications for future studies.