why do people filter common variants such as dbSNP and is it right thing to do?

Question

[epigene]

In many talks, people just say they filtered out common variants (dbSNPs etc). I'm wondering what's the purpose and theory behind doing this? dbSNPs aren't important in disease association because they have been annotated in the dbSNP database?

Answer 1

[Brian Bushnell]

It's useful when considering a very rare phenotype, as those are unlikely to be caused by common mutations.