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Researchers found [a] test can predict whether a bowel cancer patient will benefit from chemotherapy. It is thought that this could spare patients who will not benefit from treatment from unnecessary toxicity and debilitating side effects. The genetic test is already used as part of standard of care in the UK and worldwide to predict patients' responses to other targeted cancer drugs, meaning doctors could apply it to guide chemotherapy straight away. In bowel cancer, responses to last-line chemotherapy treatment trifluridine/tipiracil vary greatly between patients—with some patients showing good, long-term responses, and others seeing no benefits. The researchers found that...

The era of personal genomic medicine may have to wait. The genetic analysis of common disease is turning out to be a lot more complex than expected. Since the human genome was decoded in 2003, researchers have been developing a powerful method for comparing the genomes of patients and healthy people, with the hope of pinpointing the DNA changes responsible for common diseases. This method, called a genomewide association study, has proved technically successful despite many skeptics’ initial doubts. But it has been disappointing in that the kind of genetic variation it detects has turned out to explain surprisingly little...

Age, sex, body mass index, smoking status, hypertension, diabetes, family history, and cholesterol levels are the heavy hitters of risk assessment for coronary heart disease, especially in patients of a certain age. Combined, these risk factors explain a considerable amount of population risk; but in isolation, each is merely a weak predictor of risk, so that making risk predictions at the individual level is a complex and risky process. Recently, biomarkers such as homocysteine levels and C-reactive protein (CRP) have been added as considerations in predicting individual risk. Their inclusion has sparked considerable debate, and things could heat up yet,...