This is the first post at our blog www.matrixgenomics.com.  Matrix Genomics, Inc. is a new company. It specializes in DNA tests for common health conditions that run in families. Not eveyone will be interested, e.g. some people don’t want to know their specific disease risks, for financial reasons, or because they do not view the diseases we test risk for to be particularly relevant to their own circumstances.  However, people who have a family history of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, heart attack, or female breast cancer may wonder about their own risk of getting these diseases and wish to find out more about where they stand. If you have these concerns, we can help you find out a great deal more about you acutual level of risk based on the genes that you inherited from your parents.

We do so by by using many genes known to be associated with a specific disease’s pattern of onset from case control studies to determine the range of risk for the disese in the population and often determines an individual’s risk on that continuum directly based on their genetic endowment. This approach is no small thing and distinguishes our company from many other genetic testing companies which look to provide information on diseases that occur primarily later in life. As a test, try to find out the range of risk used by a company when they tell you about your risk for Alzheirmer’s disease, for example. Do they multipy together results or odds ratios from very different studies to produce a result for you? Do they look a smaller or larger number of genes  to give you an idea of your genetic risk for a particular disease ? Is their range of risk specified?

At Matrix Genomics we rank each individual along a range of risk that is at least 30 fold from very low to high risk and may be 50 fold or more for some diseases. In other words, we try to capture all the variation that is currently available about genes and a particular disease to give our custormers highly informed infoprmation about their risk on a detailed disease by disease basis. This approach has sound scientific backing and it is not the cheapest possible way to measure the genetic risk of contracting disease but it does provide very good information to those who are concerned about their future and disease for any reason at all.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I was walking across a quiet residential street in the Kenwood neighborhood when Muhamed Ali nearly hit me with his car.  Neither he nor I had been focused on safety at the time. I jumped out of the way as he brought his car to a halt.  We both apologized and went on our way. Genes are certainly not completely responsible for our length of life or its quality. Accidents and environmental effects can and do have great effects on our lives. Measuring the risk of a particular disease in a meticulous manner can and should give us choices that walk hand in hand with the development of a personalized medical plan which you and your doctor can develop.

Larry Corder, Ph.D.