On the use of genetic risk scores to predict cardiovascular disease in the general population

Using genetic information to predict the risk of common diseases has been the holy grail of several groups working in genetics of common human diseases.1 Results up to now have been contradictory and subject to widely different interpretations: from sheer enthusiasm to deep pessimism. While great success has been obtained in the identification of several hundreds of genetic markers robustly and consistently associated with a wide range of human quantitative phenotypes, for the majority of these genetic variants, no clear translation into a better prediction capacity has been shown. In their Heart publication, Morris et al2 provide new data on the predictive capacity of a genetic risk score crafted using information on 53 common genetic markers previously associated with coronary artery disease or stroke and studied in more than 10 000 individuals from different UK prospective studies (please insert reference here). The results are still far from...
Source: Heart - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Drugs: cardiovascular system, Hypertension, Epidemiology Editorials Source Type: research