Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Crown Princess Marie of Denmark along with deCODE scientist Unnur Thorsteinsdottir during an official visit to deCODE laboratories earlier this year.
Reykjavik, ICELAND, December 8, 2008 – deCODE genetics (Nasdaq:DCGN) today announced the discovery by an international consortium of scientists from deCODE and major European and US academic institutions of a single letter variation in the human genome (SNP) that is associated with increased fasting glucose levels and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). deCODE will employ its CLIA-registered genotyping laboratory and existing testing platform to swiftly integrate the finding into its deCODEme™ personal genome scan, and to assess the addition of this new variant to the company’s deCODE T2™ reference laboratory test for assessing individual risk of type 2 diabetes.
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Amy Doneen, Director of the Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center, Spokane, WA.
Amy Doneen at the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention Clinic in Spokane, Washington, talks about an “exciting new time” for preventive health care. Amy, a nurse practitioner, has been using nutrigenomics (the response of genes to nutrition) as part of the program for more than a decade and with outstanding results. “The goal,” says Amy “is to find out what path a patient is on to developing certain diseases and kick them off that path.” Scanning for risk factor for common conditions (such as diabetes, heart attack, several types of cancer etc.) She emphasizes the importance of gauging lifetime risk as against clinical tests that usually concentrate on immediate high risk. According to Amy, some people walk away from the second kind with a negative result and think things are always going to be fine. Genetic testing is just arriving to the market place, but Americans currently spending nearly $50 billion on stroke care alone, the time is ripe to back all advances in preventive medicine.
To read more and watch parts of the interview with Amy Doneen visit the deCODEme Customer Stories.
deCODE Breast Cancer enables women to understand whether they may benefit from more intensive screening, monitoring or preventive drug therapy.
Reykjavik, ICELAND, October 8, 2008 – deCODE genetics today announced the launch of deCODE BreastCancer™, a new tool for assessing risk of the common forms of breast cancer. For the first time, a woman concerned about breast cancer can speak with her physician about a genetic test to better understand her lifetime risk of developing the common forms of the disease.
The common forms of breast cancer result from the interplay of genetic as well as environmental and lifestyle factors and represent 95 percent of all breast cancers. These are distinct from the rare and essentially purely inherited forms of the disease due to mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which cause between 1 and 3 percent of breast cancers. deCODE BreastCancer™ is a DNA-based reference laboratory test performed using a simple blood sample or cheek swab, ordered by physicians on behalf of their patients.
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Scientists at deCODE genetics Genetic Service Facility lab in Iceland
The number of companies offering genetic tests to the public is large and growing. But there are vast and very real differences in the quality, purpose and price of testing services out there. So how do you tell the difference between them? And how do you decide which to use?
Knowing what you want
First and foremost, you need to think about what sort of information you hope to gain from your genome and how accurate you want the results to be. Are you taking the test only for fun, perhaps hoping to talk about your results on Facebook? Read More »
Here are a few thoughts on Nic Fleming’s piece on personal genome scans, of which one was our own, deCODEme:
Our genomes are all remarkably similar. And so it is the differences that are most interesting and important, and that make us who we are.
The same can be said of genetic testing services. We at deCODE were not at all surprised that Mr. Fleming found that he got some varying results from the three genome scans that he tried. Indeed we would be surprised (and more than a little dismayed) if he hadn’t. Analyzing the genome - accurately detecting which genetic markers individuals have at specific points in the genome, and correlating these variations with risk of a range of common diseases - has been our bread and butter for well over a decade. Read More »
| Tags: Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Crown Princess Marie of Denmark, deCODE diagnostics, deCODE genetics, deCODEme, Genetic Research, Genetic Tests, Kari Stefansson. 
