The first phase has been completed of a massive genomics project that could help scientists identify why some people get diseases like cancer and others do not.
More than 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members volunteered to contribute their saliva for DNA and chromosome testing for the project that is expected to accelerate research into conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, mental health disorders, and age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.
Between 600,000 and 900,000 genomic regions were genotyped for each saliva sample and length of chromosome tips or telomeres were also analyzed. The collected data will eventually be made available to other scientists.
What makes the research unique is that participants have been Kaiser Permanente patients for 15 to 20 years. That means genomic information can be linked to long-term medical records. And since researchers will be able to follow participants as long as they remain with the Kaiser system, so they will be able to assess whether DNA can predict the likelihood of developing certain diseases.
Neil Risch, co-director of Kaiser Permanente's Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health said the information has an almost unlimited potential. "We could learn how the environment affects chronic disease, why people respond to some medicines and not to others, or why diseases progress in different ways indifferent people," he explained in a telephone interview.
Genomics has been touted as a major step toward personalized medicine as an understanding of the effects of genetic factors may enable physicians to provide patients with the best medicines for them, without needing to adjust and change medications.
Kaiser Permanente's RPGEH teamed with the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California-San Francisco for the study. The National Institutes of Health provided $24.8 million in grant funding.
RPGEH was set up to facilitate epidemiologic studies of genetic and environmental influences on common health conditions, such as asthma cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and mental health disorders.
Researchers hope to build the data base to 500,000 participants. Risch said Kaiser has invested millions of dollars to generate and store the information, and to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of participants' personal information.
Risch explained that information collected from participants, including saliva samples, self-reported health surveys, and clinical data will be combined in environmental databases that will allow researchers to study the health effects of environmental factors such as air pollution and water quality as well as neighborhood characteristics, such as proximity to parks, grocery stores, and healthy foods.
Margaret Dick Tocknell is a reporter/editor with HealthLeaders Media.
