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Scientists have created a powerful new tool to calculate a person’s inherited risks for heart disease, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, chronic inflammatory bowel disease, and atrial fibrillation...By surveying changes in DNA at 6.6 million places in the human genome, investigators at the Broad Institute and Harvard University were able to identify many more people at risk than do the usual genetic tests, which take into account very few genes...The researchers are now building a website that will allow anyone to upload genetic data from a company like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. Users will receive risk scores for the five aforementioned diseases. A risk score, including obtaining the genetic data, should cost less than $100...The study began because there was general agreement among researchers that many common diseases are linked not to one mutation, but rather to thousands or millions of mutations...scientists have cataloged more than 6 million tiny changes in DNA that slightly affect the chances that people will get various diseases. Each of those genetic alterations has such a small effect—approximately a 1 percent increase or decrease in a person’s odds of getting a disease — that it would not be helpful to test for each one in isolation...But...to combine data on all of the small DNA changes to construct an individual risk score. To do that, the researchers needed a new algorithm that would weigh the significance of the variations in the genes.

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Walgreens and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs are working together to improve coordination of care for VA-enrolled patients. Through the partnership...VA providers will be able to see the entire medication and immunization history of the VA-enrolled patient if they receive prescriptions and immunizations at Walgreens...“This arrangement is the first of its kind, and it’s a strong collaboration,” said VA Sec. Robert Wilkie. “Partnerships like this will help VA continue to improve the way we care for Veterans.”...The VA-Walgreens exchange eliminates the need for providers to gather medication history from patients who fill their scripts at Walgreens...

Laura Joszt, host for Pharmacy Week in Review.

How much is your DNA worth? As millions of people pay for home tests to check on ancestry or health risks, genetic data is becoming an increasingly valuable resource for drugmakers, triggering a race to create a DNA marketplace...GlaxoSmithKline’s decision to invest $300 million in 23andMe and forge an exclusive drug development deal...crystallizes the value locked up in genetic code...Firms like EncrypGen, Nebula Genomics, LunaDNA and Zenome are using blockchain...to secure sensitive DNA records and create a transaction ledger. The new players all have slightly different models, with most simply provide data platforms, where people are rewarded for providing data...For drugmakers...access to this data offers a way to accelerate drug development, since finding a drug target linked to a human genetic variant doubles the chance of producing a new medicine.

The new drug, Onpattro (patisiran), by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, is in a new class of drugs called small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) treatment...a first-of-its-kind RNA-based therapy for treating peripheral nerve disease (polyneuropathy) caused by hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (hATTR) in adult patients...Polyneuropathy caused by hATTR is a rare, debilitating, and often fatal genetic disease characterized by the buildup of abnormal amyloid protein in peripheral nerves, the heart, and other organs...“This approval is part of a broader wave of advances that allows us to treat disease by actually targeting the root cause, enabling us to arrest or reverse a condition, rather than only being able to slow its progression or treat its symptoms...“New technologies like RNA inhibitors that alter the genetic drivers of a disease, have the potential to transform medicine, so we can better confront and even cure debilitating illnesses.

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network