Hunting the missing health link
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have embarked on an ambitious study of the link among genetics, lifestyle, environment, and health that organizers hope will set the stage for a new generation of personalized disease analysis and medical care. The study, called OurGenes, OurHealth, OurCommunity, eventually wants to enroll 100,000 patients in a lengthy, longitudinal study of the causes of illness that could help link genetic background to lifestyle and environmental factors. The study stands on three key parts: patients’ health backgrounds, which are provided to researchers through existing health records, family histories, and medical questionnaires; their genetic profiles, which are provided through blood samples; and their health futures, which are mapped through access to clinical data as it accumulates. Christine Seidman, the study’s co-principal investigator, the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and director of the Brigham’s Cardiovascular Genetics...