Will the Wellcome Trust and the Consortium Find that MS and Type 1 Look the Same Genetically Too? Paternal Age is High and These Disorders Increase

Do these variants come into the population with advancing paternal age? Is that why type 1 is almost 90% de novo/non-familial and rising 3% every year with high paternal age? Why is MS going to look like type 1 too?





High Average Paternal Age is Why Type 1 Diabetes, MS, Probably Crohn's, AutoImmune Thyroid Disorders INCREASE There Is A Male Biological Clock and Advancing Paternal Age Equals Genetic Disorders!



Source: Wellcome Trust
Date: June 7, 2007
More on: Diseases and Conditions, Diabetes, Chronic Illness, Stroke Prevention, Genes, Heart Disease

Largest Ever Study Of Genetics Of Common Diseases Published


"The link between type 1 diabetes and Crohn's disease is one of the most exciting findings to come out of the Consortium," says Professor John Todd from the University of Cambridge, who led the study into type 1 diabetes. "It is a promising avenue for us to understand how the two diseases occur. The pathways that lead to Crohn's disease are increasingly well understood and we hope that progress in treating Crohn's disease may give us clues on how to treat type 1 diabetes in the future."

Research from the Consortium has already played a major part in identifying the clearest genetic link yet to obesity and three new genes linked to type 2 diabetes, published in April in advance of the main study. It has found independently a major gene region on chromosome 9 identified by independent studies on coronary heart disease.

Researchers analysed DNA samples taken from people in the UK -- 2,000 patients for each disease and 3,000 control samples -- to identify common genetic variations for seven major diseases. These are bipolar disorder, Crohn's disease, coronary heart disease, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 and type 2 diabetes. For each disease, the researchers will study larger population samples to confirm their results.

Although the human genome is made up of more than three billion sub-units of DNA, called nucleotides (or bases), most of these show little in the way of differences between individuals. A substantial part of the variation in DNA sequence between individuals is due to single-nucleotide polymorphisms (differences), also known as SNPs. There are approximately 8 million common SNPs in European populations. Fortunately, because SNPs that lie close together on chromosomes often tell quite similar stories, researchers in the Consortium were able to explore this variation through analysing a subset of these SNPs (in fact approximately 500,000).

"Human genetics has a chequered history of irreproducible results, but this landmark collaboration of scientists in Britain has shown conclusively that the new approach of analysing a large subset of genetic variants in large samples of patients and healthy individuals works," says Professor Donnelly. "We are now able to effectively scan most of the common variation in the human genome to look for variants associated with diseases. This approach will undoubtedly herald major advances in how we understand and tackle disease in the future."

Further analysis as part of the Consortium will be looking at tuberculosis (TB), breast cancer, autoimmune thyroid disease, multiple sclerosis and ankylosing spondylitis. The results are expected later this year.