According to researchers, a study tracking heart disease in women doubts the value of genetic testing in identifying the genes responsible for heart disease and predicting a person’s risk of developing illness.
Diagnosing woman with chromosome 9 abnormalities did not help much in predicting heart disease when compared with other risk factors associated with heart disease like smoking, diabetes, C-reactive protein, bad cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and family history.
It has been shown that this common genetic trait can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular conditions. According to Nina Paynter of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, once if you are aware of risk factors of heart disease, the extra information on genetic variation in your body is helpless. It will not improve your ability to predict heart disease.
For helping people to measure their risk of various health problems, genetic tests are being developed increasingly. However, the effectiveness of these genetic testing (not all, but few) and how far they are helpful in predicting health ailments is still unclear.