According to today’s Wall Street Journal, “Researchers said they identified a genetic variant that is linked to both an increased risk of a heart attack and a person's chances of preventing such an attack by taking a cholesterol-lowering pill called a statin.â€
“Discovery of the KIF6 variant was announced by Celera Group-Applera Corp., an Alameda, Calif., diagnostics company known for having mapped the human genome in 2000 in a high-profile race with a government-funded project.â€
Details are reported in three studies being published Jan. 29 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and now available on the publication's Web site:
http://content.onlinejacc.org/in_press.dtl
“The interaction of KIF6 with statin therapy "is a very interesting and unexpected finding," said Marc Sabatine, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and a co-author of one of the papers. While it would be "premature" to base treatment decisions on a patient's KIF6 status, he said, the results "take us one step closer to personalized medicine" in which doctors use genetic data to tailor therapy for patients.â€
Celera plans to launch "in the coming months" a genetic test for about $200 for the KIF6 variant.
"It's quite provocative," said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of Scripps Genomic Medicine and a cardiologist at the Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, Calif. "It could be a marker but there are a lot of question marks surrounding it."
Researchers said further study of KIF6 could help identify mechanisms for how heart disease develops and possibly new targets for drugs to treat it.
Here is the link to the story (subscription required):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120096559471905225.html?mod=dist_smartbrief&apl=y&r=204309
And personalized medicine marches forward.
“Discovery of the KIF6 variant was announced by Celera Group-Applera Corp., an Alameda, Calif., diagnostics company known for having mapped the human genome in 2000 in a high-profile race with a government-funded project.â€
Details are reported in three studies being published Jan. 29 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and now available on the publication's Web site:
http://content.onlinejacc.org/in_press.dtl
“The interaction of KIF6 with statin therapy "is a very interesting and unexpected finding," said Marc Sabatine, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and a co-author of one of the papers. While it would be "premature" to base treatment decisions on a patient's KIF6 status, he said, the results "take us one step closer to personalized medicine" in which doctors use genetic data to tailor therapy for patients.â€
Celera plans to launch "in the coming months" a genetic test for about $200 for the KIF6 variant.
"It's quite provocative," said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of Scripps Genomic Medicine and a cardiologist at the Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, Calif. "It could be a marker but there are a lot of question marks surrounding it."
Researchers said further study of KIF6 could help identify mechanisms for how heart disease develops and possibly new targets for drugs to treat it.
Here is the link to the story (subscription required):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120096559471905225.html?mod=dist_smartbrief&apl=y&r=204309
And personalized medicine marches forward.
