The current study was undertaken to provide researchers with a set of validated AIMs for distinguishing continental populations. We believe that the results provide strong confidence that these 128 In4 AIMs and subsets of these SNPs can be used for characterizing sample sets from diverse population groups. These markers can be applied either to identify those individuals from a particular study that are members of one continental population group or alternatively used to adjust for population stratification due to differences in continental population frequency in cases and controls. The former will reduce population heterogeneity that may also correspond to reducing genetic heterogeneity for specific traits. The latter can, as shown in our modeling studies, allow the reduction or elimination of false positive results.
