Genes behind serious illnesses discovered

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk A dramatic genetic breakthrough has paved the way for potential new treatments of seven common diseases that could help more than 20 million people. The largest ever study of its kind has found 10 new genes linked to seven of the most common ailments: heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, bipolar disorder and Crohn’s disease. Some 200 British scientists from 50 research groups collaborated to discover the genes after screening DNA from 17,000 people. The scientists analysed DNA samples from 2,000 patients per disease, comparing them with 3,000 control samples from healthy volunteers. One of the most exciting finds was a new link between type 1 diabetes and Crohn’s disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disorder that affects up to 60,000 people in the UK. “It is absolutely clear now that this approach works. The findings are reliable and the whole field is changing, so our understanding of human genetics will be quite different in a year or so.