Researchers ID Genes for Some Common Diseases

(Page 2)

"Six months ago, we probably knew about 10 different genetic risk factors across those diseases," Donnelly said. "We now know closer to 30, and I would expect in a couple of years time, for those diseases, there will be substantially more as there will be for many other common diseases," he said.

Identifying genetic risk factors for diseases opens the door to testing people to determine who's at risk for what illness, Donnelly said. These risk factors, however, do not mean that one is destined to get the disease. "It's predictive, but it doesn't determine one way or the other," he said.

But knowing the risk could help people to take steps to reduce their risk, such as having more frequent screening tests or changing their lifestyle to reduce the risk, Donnelly said.

Also, knowing the biology of common diseases would make it possible to develop new treatments that target their causes, he said.

Donnelly said that even for the diseases the researchers studied, there are likely more genetic components involved than the ones they have found so far.

The researchers are continuing their work and looking for genetic components of tuberculosis, breast cancer, autoimmune thyroid disease, multiple sclerosis and ankylosing spondylitis, a rheumatic disease of the spine.

The findings on the new research are published in the June 7 issue of the journals Nature and Nature Genetics.

Anne M. Bowcock, a professor of genetics at Washington University School of Medicine and author of an accompanying editorial in Nature, said knowing the genetic components of common diseases will dramatically change the way medicine is practiced.

"This is a tour-de-force," Bowcock said of the new research. "It's going to revolutionize medicine."

"Once you know which genes are involved, you will know a lot more about the disease," she said. "There will be novel drugs developed to treat these diseases on the basis of the information that has been found right now."

Bowcock added that knowing the genetic components of a disease will also lead to individualized medicine, where treatments are based on one's own risk for an illness.

More information

For more on genes and disease, visit the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information.