Associate Epidemiologist, Department of Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital

lyle.palmer@channing.harvard.edu

Dr. Palmer is a genetic epidemiologist/statistician with applied interests in the genetics of complex human disease, particularly asthma, and strong theoretical interests in the development of novel statistical methodology. His current primary focus is asthma, and he plays a principal role in several research programs in Harvard Medical School investigating the epidemiology and genetic epidemiology of asthma and atopy. He also has several long-term collaborations with international groups, including those at the University of Oxford (Professor Bill Cookson) and the University of Western Australia (Professor Bill Musk). He is a Principal Analyst for the International Consortium on Asthma Genetics and is Director of Statistical Genomics for two large programs based at the Channing Laboratory: the NHLBI Innate Immunity Program in Genomic Applications (PGA) Center and an NHLBI Pharmacogenomics Consortium. Recently, Dr Palmer has been active in establishing teaching programs in genetics and genetic statistics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard School of Public Health and in the joint Harvard/MIT medical research program. Within the Channing Laboratory, Dr Palmer is part of the Division of Respiratory and Genetic Epidemiology, led by Dr Scott Weiss, and works closely with Drs Scott Weiss, Edwin Silverman, Juan Celadon and Diane Gold.

Dr Palmer’s methodological/theoretical work focuses upon the use of Gibbs sampling to construct generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) in order to analyze correlated data structures (such as human pedigrees) and on improving the efficiency of variance-component based linkage and association tests. He has close links to methodological groups at Case Western Reserve University (Professor Robert Elston) and the University of Leicester (Professor Paul Burton), and growing collaborations with the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health (Professors LJ Wei and Nan Laird). Dr Palmer and Professor Burton have developed methods of focusing a genome scan in the presence of etiological heterogeneity and a novel high-efficiency method for phenotype definition of complex traits. Much of his recent research effort has been devoted to phenotype definition and to causal pathways modeling in complex diseases.

Selected Publications

Palmer LJ, Paré PD, Faux JA, Moffatt MF, Daniels SE, LeSouëf PN, Bremner PR, Mockford E, Gracey M, Spargo R, Musk AW, Cookson WOCM. FceR1-b polymorphism and total serum IgE levels in endemically parasitised Australian Aborigines. American Journal of Human Genetics 1997;61(1), 182-88. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Daniels SE, Rye PJ, Gibson NA, Tay GK, Cookson WOCM, Goldblatt J, Burton PR, LeSouëf PN. Linkage of chromosome 5q and 11q gene markers to asthma-associated quantitative traits in Australian children. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 1998;158, 1825-1830. [abstract]

Burton PR, Tiller KJ, Gurrin LC, Cookson WOCM, Musk AW, Palmer LJ. Genetic variance components analysis for binary phenotypes using generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) and Gibbs sampling. Genetic Epidemiology 1999;17(2), 118-140. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, KJ Tiller, PR Burton. Genome wide linkage analysis using genetic variance components of alcohol-dependency-associated censored and continuous traits. Genetic Epidemiology 1999;17(S1), 283-288. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Valinsky LJ, Pikora T, Zubrick SR, Landau LI. Environmental factors and asthma and allergy in schoolchildren from Western Australia. European Respiratory Journal 1999;14(6), 1351-1357. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Burton PR, Faux JA, James AL, Musk AW, Cookson WOCM. Independent inheritance of serum Immunoglobulin E concentrations and airway responsiveness. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2000;161(6), 1836-1843. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Cookson WOCM. Genomic approaches to understanding asthma. Genome Research 2000;10(9), 1280-1287. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Jacobs KB, Elston RC. Haseman and Elston revisited: The effects of asertainment and residual familial correlations on power to detect linkage. Genetic Epidemiology 2000;19(4), 456-460. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Rye PJ, Gibson NA, Burton PR, Landau LI, LeSouëf PN. Airway responsiveness in early infancy predicts asthma, lung function and respiratory symptoms by school age. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2001;163, 37-42. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Cookson WOCM. Using Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) as a means to understanding the pathophysiology of asthma. Respiratory Research 2001;2:102-112.

Palmer LJ, Cookson WOCM, James AL, Musk AW, Burton PR. Gibbs-sampling based segregation analysis of asthma-associated quantitative traits in a population-based sample of nuclear families. Genetic Epidemiology 2001;20(3):356-372. [abstract]

Palmer LJ, Barnes KC, Burton PR, Chen H, Cookson WOCM, CSGA, Deichmann KA, Elston RC, Holloway JW, Jacobs KB, Laitinen T, Wjst M. Meta-analysis for linkage to asthma and atopy in the chromosome 5q31-33 candidate region. Human Molecular Genetics 2001;10(8):891-899.

Palmer LJ, Knuiman MW, Divitini ML, Burton PR, Bartholomew HC, Ryan G, James AL, Musk AW. The familial aggregation of adult lung function: results from the Busselton Health Study. European Respiratory Journal 2001;17(4):696-702. [abstract]