A Harvard scientist thinks he’s reached a new milestone: a genetic test that help identify people who are at high risk of heart attacks. Can he convince doctors to use it?

“I think in a few years I think everybody will know this number similar to the way we know our cholesterol right now,” muses Sekar Kathiresan, director of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Not everyone else is so sure. “I think it’s a brilliant approach,” says Harlan Krumholz, the Harold H. Hines Professor of Cardiology at Yale University and one of Kathiresan’s collaborators. But he worries about whether Kathiresan’s tests are ready to compete with the plethora of diagnostic tests, from AI-boosted CT scans to new types of “bad” cholesterol proteins, that are on offer. And he worries about cost. There is no commercial version of the gene test. But the very idea that such a test is not only available, but near, is the result of a cresting wave of new genetic science, the result of large efforts to gather genetic information from millions of volunteers.

…continue reading ‘A Harvard Scientist Thinks He Has A Gene Test For Heart Attack Risk. He Wants To Give It Away Free’

Image: By James Tourtellotte, photo editor of CBP Today[1] – http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/multimedia/photo_gallery/afc/laboratories/13_5flab_5fhiresa.xml (file Cbp13_5flab_5fhires.jpg, part of America’s Frontline Photography / CBP Laboratories Photography), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2875876

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