Life Style Matters!

Today I have been researching the work of the company: Navigenics ®. Navigenics was founded in 2006 by David Angus, M.D., an Oncologist and Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D., a human geneticist. There goal is to improve personal health through their product – a genomic* wide DNA test.

Looking at their site – http://navigenics.com – they resemble an important part of our future. In my previous blog post I discussed how the rapid advancement in our ability to calculate entire DNA sequences will offer insight into our lives that will change the modern lifestyle. It seems to me that Navigenics follows this innovative wave of thought.

Navigenics offers a DNA test looking at potential DNA risk factors that are associated with disease. The results of such testing will offer valuable insight into the health risks we are likely to face, and looks to offer counselling and advice on what to do with the results. While some conditions that may arise can be targeted by medicine, the majority of results will lead to specific lifestyle choices that need to be made by the individual.

When it comes to health the current trend of thinking leans towards prevention not cure. We have learned, on the whole, that medicine and healthcare cannot cure everything. Many sites offer advice on how we can eat healthily, lose weight and keep fit. In fact there has been a huge increase in the range of service offered in the modern day for health related issues – from yoga classes at the local gym to acupuncture.

Why is this relevant? Companies like Navigenics do not offer a cure to all your problems. If you live a poor lifestyle they cannot magic you back to health, neither can they prevent you from every harmful disease. What they offer is accurate and insightful advice. With so many healthy options available, it is hard to know what is right for you, most undertake a diet because it is the latest fad.

Knowing the risk factors in your life enables you to hand select the lifestyle you need to live. Many of the risks you face could be offset by undertaking a specific diet or type of exercise. Navigenics can offer you the advice for which kind you need. Not only this but when it comes to medicine, in some cases, they will be able, working with your pharmacist, to tailor make the treatment you need.

The kind of service offered by Navigenics will eventually become a part of our lifestyle, much like going to the dentist for a check up. Until it does I suggest you look at the lifestyle choices you are making right now – there is no doubt that, on average, those who eat well and exercise live longer more fulfilling lives.

* Genome – the entirety of an organisms DNA

Tags: DNA, Genome, Health, Lifestyle, Testing

Modern day DNA testing is creeping to the forefront…

Recently I have begun watching how DNA testing is slowly but surely creeping into the forefront of the media, our minds and even our lifestyles. We are all aware of the DNA testing that has been used in crime cases (made popular by TV shows such as CSI) and proving paternity. However the goal of scientists aims much higher, criminalistics and paternity testing use only small sequences of DNA that provide enough evidence for identity but offer little other use, meanwhile the scientific community is raving about full genomic testing; that is calculating the entire sequence of your DNA.

To take a brief side step, I want to explain to you how significant this is with a few illustrations:

1. If all your DNA was taken out and stretched out it would reach the sun and back over 600 times (FYI it is 93 million miles from here to the sun).
2. There is an estimated 3 billion DNA bases (a DNA base is a basic building block of DNA – think in lego terms) in every single cell in your body
3. Our entire DNA sequence written out will fill 200 – 1000 page New York Telephone directories.

As you can imagine the very first time a full human DNA sequence was calculated it cost a lot of money…US$3 billion in fact. Since the first human DNA sequence was calculated out (finished in 2003 and took 13 years), scientists have are now able to calculate an entire human DNA sequence for just a few thousand US dollars.Many corporations are now aiming to reduce costs to the US$1000 mark, and are not far from doing so, every 2 or 3 months the costs of the method have been reduced. The Harvard Nanopore group set to reach the US$1000 mark by 2014. Not only is the cost reducing exponentially, but so is the time scale. Where calculating an entire human genome used to take years, it is now more of a matter of days.

With all this in mind it was little surprise that a human genetics commission has recently ruled that there are no specific social, ethical or legal principle to prevent pre-pregnancy DNA tests for genetic conditions. (While this is not a day to day option, such organisations are thinking ahead of time). The goal of such tests would be to calculate the risk of a couples child having a genetic disease such as cystic fibrosis for example.

Many have found the increasing rate of available DNA tests for genetic diseases alarming and this with good reason, with little support in place to help people deal with the found outcomes of such tests and the fact that this field is new and hardly regulated at all.

Although for the average person on the street this may seem far off and unfamiliar there is no doubt in my mind that the next in the next 5 – 10 years DNA testing will have radically changed our lifestyle. Medical care is already switching to prevention rather than cure and with known DNA sequences we will be able to design pharmaceuticals specific to an individual, offset risk of disease, make lifestyle choices specific to our DNA make up and maybe even design the genetic make up of our children.

What are your view on the subject? Would you like to know your own DNA? – and along with that the likelihood of certain diseases? Should we have choice over the genes we pass on?

Tags: DNA, DNA Testing, Ethics, Sequencing