Combating the Diabetes Pandemic

Type 2 diabetes, also known as adult-onset diabetes, is a pandemic in the United States. 29 million people are already diagnosed, with nearly 79 million additional people considered pre-diabetic and at risk for developing the full-blown disease. Obesity is the leading cause of diabetes in those that are genetically predisposed to it, making the disease…

Widespread Genome Testing Likely to Lower Total Medical Spending

The cost of sequencing has been rapidly dropping ever since the first complete human genome was sequenced over a decade ago. Conventional wisdom says that should lead to an overall drop in medical spending. A popular argument claims that for genomic testing, this may not necessarily be the case. Genetic tests currently on the market…

Nature vs. Nurture in Genomics: Why Both Are Important

Many factors affect how genes express themselves. Until now, this blog has exclusively discussed how understanding specific variations in an individual genome allow us to determine impact on health. But this is only half the story. Age and environment are an equally important part of the equation. Epigenetics, in part, studies how external factors affect…

Genomic Revolution in Heart Transplant Medicine

Heart transplants are an extremely high-risk medical procedure. The main reason for a patient to undergo a heart transplant is to increase survivability, but an inherent contradiction arises due to the myriad postoperative risks. Among these is the risk of transplant rejection. Cardiac transplant recipients have an average of one to three rejection episodes in…