Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Studying 'Genetic Superheroes' May Unlock Mystery Around Some Devastating Diseases
Scientists say they've figured out how to track down people they call "genetic superheroes." These are people who remain healthy even though they were born with genetic mutations that would usually lead to devastating disorders. If enough of these people can be identified and studied, the researchers hope they could yield important new insights into the causes of many genetic disorders and possibly lead to new ways to prevent or treat them. (Stein, 4/11)
A new analysis of genetic data from nearly 600,000 people has detected a tiny subset of disease-resistant 鈥渟uperheroes,鈥 individuals who have mutations that should have caused devastating disease 鈥 but didn鈥檛, a Seattle scientist reported Monday. Dr. Stephen Friend, president of Seattle鈥檚 Sage Bionetworks, and his colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, sifted through a massive data set pooled from a dozen previous genetic studies. (Aleccia, 4/11)