MedGenome develops genetic CAD risk score

Hyderabad: MedGenome Labs, a diagnostics and research company, has conducted a first-ever study on Indian population that validates a novel coronary artery disease-genome-wide polygenic risk score (CAD-PRS) to precisely predict the risk of developing a coronary artery disease/myocardial infarction (MI) using a person's genetic makeup.

MedGenome Labs collaborated with researchers from Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; Narayana Health, Bengaluru; Eternal Hospital, Jaipur; Madras Medical Mission, Chennai; KMCH, Coimbatore and a few other institutes to conduct this first-ever research capturing the PRS of disease for South Asia populations and its findings are now published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

"Looking at all the available scientific evidence and our study results we are convinced that there exists a good opportunity to combine both clinical and genetic risks (polygenic risk score based) and significantly improve the primary prevention of coronary artery disease (CAD). We firmly believe that incorporating validated genetic risk scores would help in better stratification of high-risk individuals if implemented at population level,"said Dr Vedam Ramprasad, CEO, MedGenome Labs.

This study is based on the principle of genome-wide polygenic risk score (PRS) which uses a genome-wide analysis of an individual to quantify the risk of developing heart disease.