Accurate cross-platform GWAS analysis via two-stage imputation

In genome-wide association studies (GWAS), combining independent case-control cohorts has been successful in increasing power for meta and joint analyses. This success sparked interest in extending this strategy to GWAS of rare and common diseases using existing cases and external controls. However, heterogeneous genotyping data can cause spurious results. To harmonize data, we propose a new method, two-stage imputation (TSIM), where cohorts are imputed separately, merged on intersecting high-quality variants, and imputed again. We show that TSIM minimizes cohort-specific bias while controlling imputation-derived errors. Merging arthritis cases and UK Biobank controls using TSIM, we replicated known associations without introducing false positives. Furthermore, GWAS using TSIM performed comparably to the meta-analysis of nephrotic syndrome cohorts genotyped on five different platforms, demonstrating TSIM’s ability to harmonize heterogeneous genotyping data. With the plethora of publicly available genotypes, TSIM provides a GWAS framework that harmonizes heterogeneous data, enabling analysis of small and case-only cohorts.