What’s your health forecast? Expert explains science behind personal guides to well-being

You may be familiar with a range of tips for living a healthy life: Watch your weight, exercise, eat nutritious food and don’t smoke, for example. What if you could combine these lifestyle factors with a host of other variables to learn your risk of developing specific diseases, to help catch and treat them early or prevent them altogether? Victor Ortega, M.D., Ph.D., associate director for the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine in Arizona, explains how science is drawing ever closer to making such personal health forecasts possible.

Penn Study Highlights Inconsistencies of Genetic Markers for Predicting Heart Disease

Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are a cutting-edge tool in genetics, combining information from genetic markers across the genome to estimate a person’s risk of developing certain diseases, such as coronary artery disease (CAD). By analyzing a person’s DNA, PRSs offer insights into an individual’s genetic predisposition for conditions like heart disease, potentially informing a more personalized approach to healthcare. But there can be significant variability across currently available PRSs, which may limit their reliability for individual predictions, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published this week in JAMA and presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Chicago.

UCLA Health receives $4.8M NIH grant to improve genetic estimates of disease risk in diverse populations

UCLA Health will receive a $4.8 million grant from The National Institutes of Health to develop methods that will improve genetic risk estimates – polygenic risk scores – for specific diseases in people from diverse populations and mixed ancestries.