Genome wide open.

摘要

Doctors must offer the best evidence-based care to their patients, but also face an obligation to look to the future as knowledge evolves. For this reason, today's Lancet presents a study by J Brent Richards and colleagues reporting genetic associations in osteoporosis, by means of parallel genotyping of many thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms in several cohorts of white Europeans. The associations will not change doctors' practice immediately, but over time can be expected to; lead to improved understanding of mechanisms involved in osteoporosis-osteoporotic fractures are estimated to affect up to 50% of women and 22% of men, and will increase in prevalence and cause greater disability as populations age. The Lancet's editors intend to continue to publish articles documenting important genetic associations, with priority given to reports on diseases which make a major contribution to morbidity and mortality. Associations of interest are likely to be mechanistically plausible, with the potential to contribute substantially to progress in clinical diagnosis or treatment. Mindful of the danger of false positives in genetic associations, preference will be given to datasets of substantial size yielding statistically compelling results, where replication has been done in independent cohorts. It is expected that investigators will make published datasets freely available to facilitate further research.