There are several advantages to the candidate pathway approach. Focusing the scope of analysis can enable otherwise intensive procedures like genotype imputation and manual pathway curation; by maximizing annotation coverage and quality, these procedures can bridge differences in genotyping platforms across cohorts for replication or meta-analysis. Unfortunately, targeted biological coverage may fail to detect unexpected relationships, such as the association between inflammatory pathways and age-related macular degeneration [8]. Further, poor annotation of one pathway can be particularly limiting when only a few pathways are assessed. These traits make candidate pathway analysis most appropriate where computational resources are limited and where specific pathways are of a priori interest.
