The Clinical Utility of Genetic Data in CVD

Stanley S Wang MD JD MPH
Clinical Cardiologist, Austin Heart
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Chapel Hill, NC

INTRODUCTION

At the American Heart Association 2008 Scientific Session (AHA 2008) entitled "Personalized Genomics: Ready for Primetime?" Dr Eric Topol, Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and Editor-in-Chief of theheart.org, shared his own genome-wide scan results; revealing that he has an above average lifetime risk for myocardial infarction (MI) and rheumatoid arthritis. While consumer genome-wide scans have received a lot of press attention, clinicians (and cardiologists in particular) are more concerned with the individual tests that are currently available, such as those identifying people at greater risk for coronary artery disease (CAD)/MI (9p21) and atrial fibrillation (4q25), or those used to predict response to pharmacotherapy such as warfarin (CYP2C9/VKORC1)./.../