Not So Useful?
17/02/10 11:32 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 17:42.
The fact that family history provided insights into the risks of cardiovascular disease in this study may still support a strong genetic component to development of the disease in the general population. However, dietary habits can also be passed on between generations that live together, so transmitted attitudes are probably likewise significant. While the chosen 101 SNP's appeared initially to have a high correlation with the cardiovascular disease, it seems environmental factors play a much stronger role and/or cardiovascular disease has much more complex and diverse etiology than we appreciate even today. The difficulty in prediction of outcomes based on the SNP's calls into question whether genetic profiling will truly be useful for disease prediction in general. It also reveals the problem with the accuracy of promising biomarkers when they are put to the test in larger clinical studies. With at least two hundred oncogenes and tumour-suppressor genes implicated in the development of different cancers, it seems likely that many degenerative diseases of aging will be as complex if not more so than cancer. Biomarkers based on changes in protein expression, phosphorylation and interactions will ultimately prove to be better indicators of disease prognosis, since they culminate from both genetic and environmental inputs. The development of antibody microarray technologies such as those offered by Kinexus Bioinformatics should facilitate this.
Link to the original blog post
The fact that family history provided insights into the risks of cardiovascular disease in this study may still support a strong genetic component to development of the disease in the general population. However, dietary habits can also be passed on between generations that live together, so transmitted attitudes are probably likewise significant. While the chosen 101 SNP's appeared initially to have a high correlation with the cardiovascular disease, it seems environmental factors play a much stronger role and/or cardiovascular disease has much more complex and diverse etiology than we appreciate even today. The difficulty in prediction of outcomes based on the SNP's calls into question whether genetic profiling will truly be useful for disease prediction in general. It also reveals the problem with the accuracy of promising biomarkers when they are put to the test in larger clinical studies. With at least two hundred oncogenes and tumour-suppressor genes implicated in the development of different cancers, it seems likely that many degenerative diseases of aging will be as complex if not more so than cancer. Biomarkers based on changes in protein expression, phosphorylation and interactions will ultimately prove to be better indicators of disease prognosis, since they culminate from both genetic and environmental inputs. The development of antibody microarray technologies such as those offered by Kinexus Bioinformatics should facilitate this.
Link to the original blog post