(Don't) Be Still My Beating Heart
22/11/10 18:56 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Mon, 11/22/2010 - 18:56.
Heart disease and stroke remains the number one causes of death of North Americans and Europeans. While the rates of these diseases are temporarily on decline due to improved medicines and the adoption by a segment of our societies for healthier lifestyles, the future is much bleaker for the younger generation. Childhood obesity has increased over 5-fold in the last 25 years, and this will culminate in coming years in a sharp escalation of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other related ailments.
The discovery of genetic mutations in families with documented histories of diseases has proven to be very insightful and is certainly worthy of continuation. These studies help define critical proteins in disease processes that may be important in the general population as well. However, the identification of SNP variants in the general population that are linked to predisposed risks for diseases of aging by random genome wide sequencing will be immensely more challenging. Nearly half of the general population is at risk to begin with either cardiovascular diseases or diabetes or both, apparently due to a combination of their genetics, diet and other environmental factors. We are going to need a lot of data from a lot of people to even begin to find reliable driver as opposed to bystander mutations. It's going to take decades to sort this out, although some clear predictive biomarkers will probably ultimately emerge.
My biggest concern about all of the resources, time and energy that will be expended in finding SNP biomarkers, and the lost opportunities along other more productive lines of research that will result, is how this information will actually be used. It seems that when confronted with clear, unequivocal data about the deleterious effects of various foods and substances, it is human nature that most people still don't modify their lifestyles. For example, the risk is about 1 in 7 that if one smokes over many years, he or she will develop lung cancer in his or her lifetime, never mind all of the other negative health consequences that can arise from this self-destructive action. Interestingly, this is not too far different in odds from playing Russian roulette - the offending object is still placed in the mouth, but the lethal effects are infinitely faster and so less painful. Despite this, cigarette smoking is on the rise in youth, and especially in Asian countries. Probably relatively few people with knowledge of all of their deleterious mutations in their genomes will actually change their lifestyles even if they knew that they might be at a slightly higher risk of disease and death.
Link to the original blog post.
Heart disease and stroke remains the number one causes of death of North Americans and Europeans. While the rates of these diseases are temporarily on decline due to improved medicines and the adoption by a segment of our societies for healthier lifestyles, the future is much bleaker for the younger generation. Childhood obesity has increased over 5-fold in the last 25 years, and this will culminate in coming years in a sharp escalation of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other related ailments.
The discovery of genetic mutations in families with documented histories of diseases has proven to be very insightful and is certainly worthy of continuation. These studies help define critical proteins in disease processes that may be important in the general population as well. However, the identification of SNP variants in the general population that are linked to predisposed risks for diseases of aging by random genome wide sequencing will be immensely more challenging. Nearly half of the general population is at risk to begin with either cardiovascular diseases or diabetes or both, apparently due to a combination of their genetics, diet and other environmental factors. We are going to need a lot of data from a lot of people to even begin to find reliable driver as opposed to bystander mutations. It's going to take decades to sort this out, although some clear predictive biomarkers will probably ultimately emerge.
My biggest concern about all of the resources, time and energy that will be expended in finding SNP biomarkers, and the lost opportunities along other more productive lines of research that will result, is how this information will actually be used. It seems that when confronted with clear, unequivocal data about the deleterious effects of various foods and substances, it is human nature that most people still don't modify their lifestyles. For example, the risk is about 1 in 7 that if one smokes over many years, he or she will develop lung cancer in his or her lifetime, never mind all of the other negative health consequences that can arise from this self-destructive action. Interestingly, this is not too far different in odds from playing Russian roulette - the offending object is still placed in the mouth, but the lethal effects are infinitely faster and so less painful. Despite this, cigarette smoking is on the rise in youth, and especially in Asian countries. Probably relatively few people with knowledge of all of their deleterious mutations in their genomes will actually change their lifestyles even if they knew that they might be at a slightly higher risk of disease and death.
Link to the original blog post.