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Signal Acquisition, Score Interpretation, and Economics of a Non-Invasive Point-of-Care Test for Coronary Artery Disease
Published on: August 9, 2024
Clinical applications of polygenic risk score for coronary artery disease through the life course
Akl C Fahed1, Pradeep Natarajan1
1Cardiovascular Research Center, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Center for Genomic Medicine, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Cardiovascular Disease Initiative, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Insights
Polygenic risk scores for coronary artery disease (CAD) offer improved prevention and treatment strategies. These scores can identify at-risk individuals early and guide precise interventions throughout life.
Area of Science:
- Cardiovascular Medicine
- Genetics
- Preventive Cardiology
Background:
- Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a major global health burden.
- Current prevention strategies for CAD have limitations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review the application of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for CAD.
- To explore how PRS can enhance preventive and treatment frameworks.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing literature on PRS in CAD.
- Analysis of PRS utility across different life stages and clinical scenarios.
Main Results:
- PRS can identify individuals at high risk for CAD early in life.
- PRS improves risk prediction accuracy in middle age.
- PRS can guide treatment decisions and clinical trial design post-CAD onset.
Conclusions:
- PRS holds significant potential to personalize CAD prevention and treatment.
- Widespread clinical implementation of PRS for CAD requires further development and validation.
Abstract:
Coronary artery disease (CAD) remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, highlighting the limitations of current primary and secondary prevention frameworks. In this review, we detail how the polygenic risk score for CAD can improve our current preventive and treatment frameworks across three clinical applications that span the life course: (i) identification and treatment of people at increased risk early in the life course prior to the onset of clinical risk factors, (ii) improving the precision around risk estimation in middle age, and (ii) guiding treatment decisions and enabling more efficient clinical trials even after the onset of CAD. We end by summarizing the efforts needed as we head towards more widespread use of polygenic risk score for CAD in clinical practice.
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