Researchers predict risk for common deadly diseases from millions of genetic variants

A research team reports a new kind of genome analysis that could identify large fractions of the population who have a much higher risk of developing serious common diseases, including coronary artery disease, breast cancer, or type 2 diabetes. These tests, which use information from millions of places in the genome to ascertain risk for five diseases, can flag greater likelihood of developing the potentially fatal conditions well before any symptoms appear.