Knowing Genetic Makeup May Not Significantly Improve Disease Risk Prediction
May 30, 2012 Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers have found that detailed knowledge about your genetic makeup - the interplay between genetic variants and other genetic variants, or between genetic variants and environmental risk factors - may only change your estimated disease prediction risk for three common diseases by a few percentage points, which is typically not enough to make a difference in prevention or treatment plans. It is the first study to revisit claims in previous research that including such information in risk models would eventually help doctors either prevent or treat diseases.
"While identifying a synergistic effect between even a single genetic variant and another risk factor is known to be extremely challenging and requires studies with a very large number of individuals, the benefit of such discovery for risk prediction purpose might be very limited," said lead author Hugues Aschard, research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology.
The study appears online May 24, 2012 and will appear in the June 8, 2012 print issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics.
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