05
June
2015
|
03:35 AM
America/Chicago
Your Next Prescription Could Be a Genome Sequence
While you won't encounter genome sequencing on an average visit to the ER, there are certain clinical areas where this technology has indeed become routine: cancer, pediatric care, the diagnosis and treatment of ultra rare diseases and a few others.
The speaker who talked about the infant with liver failure - Stephen Kingsmore from Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. - noted, unsurprisingly, that waiting until a patient is in crisis to do the genome sequencing is not ideal. For optimal care, he suggested it would be better to sequence a person's genome at birth so that information could be readily available when a problem does arise.
Read more via Huffington Post