Polygenic risk scoring flags likelihood of developing common diseases
A research team at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Harvard Medical School (HMS) reports a new kind of genome analysis that could identify large fractions of the population who have a much higher risk of developing serious common diseases, including coronary artery disease, breast cancer, or Type 2 diabetes. These tests, which use information from millions of places in the genome to ascertain risk for five diseases, can flag greater likelihood of developing the potentially fatal conditions well before any symptoms appear. While the study was conducted with data from the U.K., it suggests that up to 25 million people in the U.S. may be at more than triple the normal risk for coronary artery disease, and millions more may be at similar elevated risk for the other conditions, based on genetic variation alone. The genomic information could allow physicians to focus particular attention...