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Tests for heart-disease risk could be misleading

Genetic variants may not really be linked to heart troubles after all.

A study looking at 85 genetic variations thought to be linked to heart disease — some of which are already used in clinical tests — has been unable to confirm that any of these links are real.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on April 10, 2007
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This paper hightlights a common problem of unreliable association studies that make the results obtained from these studies unsuitable for clinical purposes. With genome-wide scans available for genome-wide association studies, we may have a complete picture of the genetic variants but this is not sufficient to understand the entire cellular network that involves many aspects of gene-regulation, gene-gene interaction, protein-protein interaction etc and the environmental factors that in turn regulate these networks. Thus, a systems approach may be of help in selecting potential disease markers provided it takes into account the environmental factors in addition to the molecular components.

Posted by: Anshu Bhardwaj | April 11, 2007 09:33 AM

It's not just scientific journals that have a hard time publishing negative results. I was sorry to see that this study didn't get wider coverage in the general press.

Posted by: Christine Gorman | April 12, 2007 02:47 PM

Unfortunately, scientists are scared to publish negative or neutral data, though it may involve the same amount of work, money, time, effort, preparation and still it doesn't get appreciation. Personally I think there should be at least website where these "not-so-impressing" data would be published and accessible; these would help to avoid unecessary repetition of use of animals, money and time.

Posted by: Adrienn Kis | April 16, 2007 04:46 PM

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