Figure 1

Relationship between the proportion of variance explained by genetic factors and the maximum discriminative accuracy of genetic testing. The discriminative accuracy, assessed as the Area Under the receiver operating characteristic Curve (AUC), is the extent to which predicted risks can discriminate between individuals who will develop the disease of interest and those who will not. The AUC is the probability that the test correctly identifies the person who will develop the disease from a pair of whom one will be affected and one will remain unaffected, and ranges from 0.5 (total lack of discrimination) to 1.0 (perfect discrimination). The numbers next to the smoothed lines refer to the risk of disease in the population. Reprinted with permission from ref 7 (Copyright 2006, Wolters Kluwer Health).