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New American Gastroenterological Association Guidelines for Managing Crohn’s Disease Suggest More Clinical Laboratory Tests and Fewer Colonoscopies

As doctors become more familiar with using biomarkers to monitor Crohn’s disease, clinical laboratories may play a greater role in that process

New evidence-based guidelines from the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) that call for using specific biomarkers to help manage Crohn’s disease (CD) may decrease the number of invasive procedures patients must undergo and increase the role clinical laboratories play in monitoring the disease.

The new AGA guidelines “recommend using the C-reactive protein (CRP) biomarker in blood and the fecal calprotectin (FCP) biomarker in stool to measure inflammation levels and assess whether Crohn’s disease is in remission or active,” Medical News Today reported.

Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes inflammation in the digestive tract, primarily in the small and large intestine. The cause of the disease is unknown, but genetics may play a role.

Typically, CD patients must undergo repeated colonoscopies to monitor the disease’s progression or remission. This has long been standard practice. Now, however, “AGA recommends the use of biomarkers in addition to colonoscopy and imaging studies,” according to an AGA news release. This hints at a greater role for clinical laboratories in helping physicians manage patients with Crohn’s Disease.

“Patients’ symptoms do not always match endoscopic findings, so biomarkers are a useful tool to understand and monitor the status of inflammation and guide decision making in patients with Crohn’s disease,” said gastroenterologist Siddharth Singh, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego Health and a co-author of the new AGA guidelines.

The AGA’s new guidelines demonstrate how medical science is generating new insights about how multiple biomarkers can be associated for diagnosis/management of a disease in ways that change the standard of care, particularly if it can reduce invasive procedures for the patient by the use of less invasive methods (such as a venous blood draw instead of a colonoscopy).

The AGA published its new guidelines in the journal Gastroenterology titled, “AGA Clinical Practice Guideline on the Role of Biomarkers for the Management of Crohn’s Disease.”

Ashwin Ananthakrishnan MD

“Based on this guideline, biomarkers are no longer considered experimental and should be an integral part of inflammatory bowel disease care,” Ashwin Ananthakrishnan MD (above), a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the guidelines, told Medical News Today. Under the new AGA guidelines, clinical laboratories will play a greater role in helping patients monitor their disease. (Photo copyright: Massachusetts General Hospital.)

Patient’s Needs Determine Biomarker vs Endoscopy Monitoring

AGA’s new guidelines could give patients a more comfortable, cost-effective, and possibly more efficient treatment plan to manage their Crohn’s disease. That’s even true if a patient’s Crohn’s disease is in remission.

With these new guidelines, Crohn’s disease patients in remission would only need their biomarkers to be checked every six to 12 months. Patients with active symptoms would need their biomarkers checked roughly every two to four months.

Biomarker testing can be seen as a useful addition to Crohn’s disease care rather than a full replacement of other forms of care. For example, the new AGA guidelines do not fully omit imaging studies and colonoscopies from treatment. Rather, they are recommended in treatment plans based on the patient’s needs.

In their Gastroenterology paper, the AGA authors wrote, “A biomarker-based monitoring strategy involves routine assessment of symptoms and noninvasive biomarkers of inflammation in patients with CD in symptomatic remission to inform ongoing management. In this situation, normalization of biomarkers is an adequate treatment target—asymptomatic patients with normal biomarkers would continue current management without endoscopy, whereas those with elevated biomarkers would undergo endoscopy.”

Fecal Matter Biomarkers

In speaking with Medical News Today on the benefits of using fecal biomarkers to assess a patient’s disease maintenance, gastroenterologist Jesse Stondell, MD, an Associate Clinical Professor at UC Davis Health, said, “If we start a patient on therapy, they’re not responding appropriately, they’re still having a lot of symptoms, we can check that fecal calprotectin test and get a very quick sense of if things are working or not.

“If the calprotectin is normal, it could be reassuring that there may be other reasons for their symptoms, and that the medicine’s working. But if they have symptoms, and a calprotectin is elevated, that’s a signal that we have to worry the medicine is not working. And that we need to change therapy in that patient,” he added.

“This is a win for Crohn’s disease patients,” Ashwin Ananthakrishnan, MD, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the AGA’s new guidelines, told Medical News Today. “Biomarkers are usually easier to obtain, less invasive, more cost-effective than frequent colonoscopies, and can be assessed more frequently for tighter disease control and better long-term outcomes in Crohn’s disease.”

Clinical laboratories should expect these guidelines to increase demand for the processing of blood or fecal matter biomarker testing. As Crohn’s disease monitoring becomes more dependent on biomarker testing, clinical labs will play a critical role in that process.

—Ashley Croce

Related Information:

Fewer Colonoscopies? New Crohn’s Guidelines Emphasize Blood, Stool Tests as Management Tool

AGA Clinical Practice Guideline on the Role of Biomarkers for the Management of Crohn’s Disease

Biomarker- vs Endoscopy-Based Monitoring Strategy in Crohn’s Disease

First Comprehensive Guideline on Using Biomarkers for Monitoring Crohn’s Disease

National Library of Medicine: Crohn’s Disease

Crohn’s Disease Is on the Rise

University of California San Francisco Study Finds Both High and Low Levels of High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Associated with Increased Dementia Risk

If validated, study findings may result in new biomarkers for clinical laboratory cholesterol tests and for diagnosing dementia

Researchers continue to find new associations between biomarkers commonly tested by clinical laboratories and certain health conditions and diseases. One recent example comes from research conducted by the University of California San Francisco. The UCSF study connected cholesterol biomarkers generally used for managing cardiovascular disease with an increased risk for dementia as well.

The researchers found that both high and low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL)—often referred to as “good” cholesterol—was associated with dementia in older adults, according to a news release from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

UCSF’s large, longitudinal study incorporated data from 184,367 people in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California health plan. How the findings may alter cholesterol biomarker use in future diagnostics has not been determined.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Neurology titled, “Low- and High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and Dementia Risk over 17 Years of Follow-up among Members of Large Health Care Plan.”

Maria Glymour, ScD

“The elevation in dementia risk with both high and low levels of HDL cholesterol was unexpected, but these increases are small, and their clinical significance is uncertain,” said epidemiologist Maria Glymour, ScD (above), study author and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF School of Medicine, in a news release. This is another example of how researchers are associating common biomarkers tested regularly by clinical laboratories with additional health conditions and disease states. (Photo copyright: University of California San Francisco.)

HDL Levels Link to Dementia Risk

The UCSF researchers used cholesterol measurements and health behavior questions as they tracked Kaiser Permanente Northern California health plan members who were at least 55 years old between 2002 and 2007, and who did not have dementia at the time of the study’s launch.

The researchers then followed up with the study participants through December 2020 to find out if they had developed dementia, Medical News Today reported.

“Previous studies on this topic have been inconclusive, and this study is especially informative because of the large number of participants and long follow-up,” said epidemiologist Maria Glymour, ScD, study author and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF School of Medicine, in the AAN news release. “This information allowed us to study the links with dementia across the range of cholesterol levels and achieve precise estimates even for people with cholesterol levels that are quite high or quite low.” 

According to HealthDay, UCSF’s study findings included the following:

  • More than 25,000 people developed dementia over about nine years. They were divided into five groups.
  • 53.7 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) was the average HDL cholesterol level, amid an optimal range of above 40 mg/dL for men and above 50 mg/dL for women.
  • A 15% rate of dementia was found in participants with HDL of 65 mg/dL or above.
  • A 7% rate of dementia was found in participants with HDL of 11 mg/dL to 41 mg/dL.

“We found a U-shaped relationship between HDL and dementia risk, such that people with either lower or higher HDL had a slightly elevated risk of dementia,” Erin Ferguson, PhD student of Epidemiology at UCSF, the study’s lead study author, told Medical News Today.

What about LDL?

The UCSF researchers found no correlation between low-density lipoprotein (LDL)—often referred to as “bad” cholesterol”—and increased risk for dementia. But the risk did increase slightly when use of statin lipid-lowering medications were included in the analysis.

“Higher LDL was not associated with dementia risk overall, but statin use qualitatively modified the association. Higher LDL was associated with a slightly greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease-related dementia for statin users,” the researchers wrote in Neurology.

“We found no association between LDL cholesterol and dementia risk in the overall study cohort. Our results add to evidence that HDL cholesterol has similarly complex associations with dementia as with heart disease and cancer,” Glymour noted in the AAN news release.

Australian Study also Links High HDL to Dementia

A separate study from Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, found that “abnormally high levels” of HDL was also associated with increased risk for dementia, according to a Monash news release.

The Monash study—which was part of the ASPREE (ASPpirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly) trial of people taking daily aspirin—involved 16,703 Australians and 2,411 Americans during the years 2010 to 2014. The researchers found:

  • 850 participants had developed dementia over about six years.
  • A 27% increased risk of dementia among people with HDL above 80 mg/dL and a 42% higher dementia risk for people 75 years and older with high HDL levels.

These findings, Newsweek pointed out, do not necessarily mean that high levels of HDL cause dementia. 

“There might be additional factors that affect both these findings, such as a genetic link that we are currently unaware of,” Andrew Doig, PhD, Professor, Division of Neuroscience at University of Manchester, told Newsweek. Doig was not involved in the in the Monash University research.

Follow-up research could explore the possibility of diagnosing dementia earlier using blood tests and new biomarkers, Newsweek noted.

The Australian researchers published their findings in The Lancet Regional Health-Western Pacific titled, “Association of Plasma High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Level with Risk of Incident Dementia: A Cohort Study of Healthy Older Adults.”

Cholesterol Lab Test Results of Value to Clinical Labs

If further studies validate new biomarkers for testing and diagnosis, a medical laboratory’s longitudinal record of cholesterol test results over many years may be useful in identifying people with an increased risk for dementia.

Clinical pathologists and laboratory managers will want to stay tuned as additional study insights and findings are validated and published. Existing laboratory testing reference ranges may need to be revised as well.

As well, the findings of this UCSF research demonstrate that, in this age of information, there will be plenty of opportunities for clinical lab scientists and pathologists to take their labs’ patient data and combine it with other sets of data. Digital tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning would then be used to assess that large pool of data and produce clinically actionable insights. In turn, that positions labs to add more value and be paid for that value.

—Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

Both High and Low HDL Cholesterol Tied to Increased Risk of Dementia

Low-and High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and Dementia Risk over 17 Years of Follow-up among Members of a Large Health Care Plan

Both High and Low HDL Cholesterol Tied to Slight Increase in Risk of Dementia

How HDL “Good” Cholesterol Might Raise Dementia Risk

HDL vs. LDL Cholesterol

How Levels of “Good” Cholesterol May Increase Dementia Risk

High Levels of “Good Cholesterol” May Be Associated with Dementia Risk, Study Shows

Association of Plasma High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Level with Incident Dementia: A Cohort Study of Healthy Older Adults

Study Claims High Good Cholesterol Levels Linked to Greater Dementia Risk

University of Athens Researchers Create Wooden Tongue Depressor with Biosensing Capabilities Capable of Identifying Biomarkers

Scientists believe the biodegradable device could someday help detect multiple saliva biomarkers. If true, it might provide a new type of test for clinical laboratories

When it comes to tongue depressors, it turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. Researchers from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Greece (NKUA) have taken this simple wooden medical tool and developed a high-tech biosensing device that may someday be useful at the point-of-care in hospitals and as a new type of test for clinical laboratories.

Using diode laser engraving, the researchers developed an “eco-friendly disposable sensor that can measure glucose levels and other biomarkers in saliva,” according to LabMedica.

This proof-of-principle biosensing device demonstrates the feasibility of “simultaneous determination of glucose and nitrite in artificial saliva,” according to the NKUA scientists who hope it will help doctors diagnose a variety of conditions.

The researchers published a paper on the development of their new wooden biosensor in the journal Analytical Chemistry titled, “Wooden Tongue Depressor Multiplex Saliva Biosensor Fabricated via Diode Laser Engraving.”

biosensing tongue depressor

In their published paper, the scientists at the University of Athens wrote that their wooden electrochemical biosensing tongue depressor (above) “is an easy-to-fabricate disposable point-of-care chip with a wide scope of applicability to other bioassays,” and that “it paves the way for the low-cost and straightforward production of wooden electrochemical platforms.” Might this and other similar biosensing devices eventually find their way to clinical laboratories for use in identifying and tracking certain biomarkers for disease? (Photo copyright: University of Athens.)


How to Make a High-Tech Tongue Depressor

Though wood is affordable and accessible, it doesn’t conduct electricity very well. The researchers’ first attempt to solve this problem was to use the wood as “a passive substrate” to which they coated “metals and carbon-based inks,” LabMedica reported. After that they tried using high-powered lasers to “char specific regions on the wood, turning those spots into conductive graphite.” But that process was complicated, expensive, and a fire hazard.

The researchers eventually turned to “low-power diode lasers” which have been used successfully “to make polyimide-based sensors but have not previously been applied to wooden electronics and electrochemical sensors,” LabMedica noted.

In their Analytical Chemistry paper, the researchers wrote, “A low-cost laser engraver, equipped with a low-power (0.5 W) diode laser, programmably irradiates the surface of the WTD [wooden tongue depressor], forming two mini electrochemical cells (e-cells). The two e-cells consist of four graphite electrodes: two working electrodes, a common counter, and a common reference electrode. The two e-cells are spatially separated via programmable pen-plotting, using a commercial hydrophobic marker pen.”

In other words, the researchers “used a portable, low-cost laser engraver to create a pattern of conductive graphite electrodes on a wooden tongue depressor, without the need for special conditions. Those electrodes formed two electrochemical cells separated by lines drawn with a water-repellent permanent marker,” states a press release from the American Chemical Society.

“The biosensor was then used to quickly and simultaneously measure nitrite and glucose concentrations in artificial saliva. Nitrite can indicate oral diseases like periodontitis, while glucose can serve as a diagnostic for diabetes. The researchers suggest that these low-cost devices could be adapted to detect other saliva biomarkers and could be easily and rapidly produced on-site at medical facilities,” LabMedica reported.

Benefits of Using Wood

One of the major benefits of using wood for their biosensing device is how environmentally friendly it is. “Since wood is a renewable, biodegradable naturally occurring material, the development of conductive patterns on wood substrates is a new and innovative chapter in sustainable electronics and sensors,” the researchers wrote in Analytical Chemistry.

Additionally, the tongue depressor features “An easy-to-fabricate disposable point-of-care chip with a wide scope of applicability to other bioassays, while it paves the way for the low-cost and straightforward production of wooden electrochemical platforms,” the researchers added.

This adds to a growing trend of developing bioassay products that keep the health of our planet in mind.

In “University of Pennsylvania Researchers Use Cellulose to Produce Accurate Rapid COVID-19 Test Results Faster and Cheaper than Traditional PCR Tests,” we covered how researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) had developed a biodegradable rapid COVID-19 test that uses bacterial cellulose (BC) instead of printed circuit boards (PCBs) as its biosensor.

“This new BC test is non-toxic, naturally biodegradable and both inexpensive and scalable to mass production, currently costing less than $4.00 per test to produce. Its cellulose fibers do not require the chemicals used to manufacture paper, and the test is almost entirely biodegradable,” a UPenn blog post noted.

New Future Tool Use in Clinical Diagnostics

Who could have predicted that the lowly wooden tongue depressor would go high tech with technology that uses lasers to convert it to an electrochemical multiplex biosensing device for oral fluid analysis? This is yet another example of technologies cleverly applied to classic devices that enable them to deliver useful diagnostic information about patients.

And while a biosensing tongue depressor is certainly a diagnostic tool that may be useful for nurses and physicians in clinic and hospital settings, with further technology advancements, it could someday be used to collect specimens that measure more than glucose and nitrites.

—Kristin Althea O’Connor

Related Information:

Wooden Tongue Depressor Multiplex Saliva Biosensor Fabricated via Diode Laser Engraving

Say ‘Ahhh’: This Ecofriendly Tongue Depressor Checks Vitals

Biosensor-Fabricated Wooden Tongue Depressor Measures Glucose and Nitrite in Saliva

Google DeepMind Says Its New Artificial Intelligence Tool Can Predict Which Genetic Variants Are Likely to Cause Disease

Genetic engineers at the lab used the new tool to generate a catalog of 71 million possible missense variants, classifying 89% as either benign or pathogenic

Genetic engineers continue to use artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to develop research tools that have implications for clinical laboratories. The latest development involves Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab which has created an AI tool that, they say, can predict whether a single-letter substitution in DNA—known as a missense variant (aka, missense mutation)—is likely to cause disease.

The Google engineers used their new model—dubbed AlphaMissense—to generate a catalog of 71 million possible missense variants. They were able to classify 89% as likely to be either benign or pathogenic mutations. That compares with just 0.1% that have been classified using conventional methods, according to the DeepMind engineers.

This is yet another example of how Google is investing to develop solutions for healthcare and medical care. In this case, DeepMind might find genetic sequences that are associated with disease or health conditions. In turn, these genetic sequences could eventually become biomarkers that clinical laboratories could use to help physicians make earlier, more accurate diagnoses and allow faster interventions that improve patient care.

The Google engineers published their findings in the journal Science titled, “Accurate Proteome-wide Missense Variant Effect Prediction with AlphaMissense.” They also released the catalog of predictions online for use by other researchers.

Jun Cheng, PhD (left), and Žiga Avsec, PhD (right)

“AI tools that can accurately predict the effect of variants have the power to accelerate research across fields from molecular biology to clinical and statistical genetics,” wrote Google DeepMind engineers Jun Cheng, PhD (left), and Žiga Avsec, PhD (right), in a blog post describing the new tool. Clinical laboratories benefit from the diagnostic biomarkers generated by this type of research. (Photo copyrights: LinkedIn.)

AI’s Effect on Genetic Research

Genetic experiments to identify which mutations cause disease are both costly and time-consuming, Google DeepMind engineers Jun Cheng, PhD, and Žiga Avsec, PhD, wrote in a blog post. However, artificial intelligence sped up that process considerably.

“By using AI predictions, researchers can get a preview of results for thousands of proteins at a time, which can help to prioritize resources and accelerate more complex studies,” they noted.

Of all possible 71 million variants, approximately 6%, or four million, have already been seen in humans, they wrote, noting that the average person carries more than 9,000. Most are benign, “but others are pathogenic and can severely disrupt protein function,” causing diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anemia, and cancer.

“A missense variant is a single letter substitution in DNA that results in a different amino acid within a protein,” Cheng and Avsec wrote in the blog post. “If you think of DNA as a language, switching one letter can change a word and alter the meaning of a sentence altogether. In this case, a substitution changes which amino acid is translated, which can affect the function of a protein.”

In the Google DeepMind study, AlphaMissense predicted that 57% of the 71 million variants are “likely benign,” 32% are “likely pathogenic,” and 11% are “uncertain.”

The AlphaMissense model is adapted from an earlier model called AlphaFold which uses amino acid genetic sequences to predict the structure of proteins.

“AlphaMissense was fed data on DNA from humans and closely related primates to learn which missense mutations are common, and therefore probably benign, and which are rare and potentially harmful,” The Guardian reported. “At the same time, the program familiarized itself with the ‘language’ of proteins by studying millions of protein sequences and learning what a ‘healthy’ protein looks like.”

The model assigned each variant a score between 0 and 1 to rate the likelihood of pathogenicity [the potential for a pathogen to cause disease]. “The continuous score allows users to choose a threshold for classifying variants as pathogenic or benign that matches their accuracy requirements,” Avsec and Cheng wrote in their blog post.

However, they also acknowledged that it doesn’t indicate exactly how the variation causes disease.

The engineers cautioned that the predictions in the catalog are not intended for clinical use. Instead, they “should be interpreted with other sources of evidence.” However, “this work has the potential to improve the diagnosis of rare genetic disorders, and help discover new disease-causing genes,” they noted.

Genomics England Sees a Helpful Tool

BBC noted that AlphaMissense has been tested by Genomics England, which works with the UK’s National Health Service. “The new tool is really bringing a new perspective to the data,” Ellen Thomas, PhD, Genomics England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, told the BBC. “It will help clinical scientists make sense of genetic data so that it is useful for patients and for their clinical teams.”

AlphaMissense is “a big step forward,” Ewan Birney, PhD, Deputy Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) told the BBC. “It will help clinical researchers prioritize where to look to find areas that could cause disease.”

Other experts, however, who spoke with MIT Technology Review were less enthusiastic.

“DeepMind is being DeepMind,” Insilico Medicine founder/CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, told the MIT publication. “Amazing on PR and good work on AI.”

Heidi Rehm, PhD, co-director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute, suggested that the DeepMind engineers overstated the certainty of the model’s predictions. She told the publication that she was “disappointed” that they labeled the variants as benign or pathogenic.

“The models are improving, but none are perfect, and they still don’t get you to pathogenic or not,” she said.

“Typically, experts don’t declare a mutation pathogenic until they have real-world data from patients, evidence of inheritance patterns in families, and lab tests—information that’s shared through public websites of variants such as ClinVar,” the MIT article noted.

Is AlphaMissense a Biosecurity Risk?

Although DeepMind has released its catalog of variations, MIT Technology Review notes that the lab isn’t releasing the entire AI model due to what it describes as a “biosecurity risk.”

The concern is that “bad actors” could try using it on non-human species, DeepMind said. But one anonymous expert described the restrictions “as a transparent effort to stop others from quickly deploying the model for their own uses,” the MIT article noted.

And so, genetics research takes a huge step forward thanks to Google DeepMind, artificial intelligence, and deep learning. Clinical laboratories and pathologists may soon have useful new tools that help healthcare provider diagnose diseases. Time will tell. But the developments are certain worth watching.

—Stephen Beale

Related Information:

AlphaFold Is Accelerating Research in Nearly Every Field of Biology

A Catalogue of Genetic Mutations to Help Pinpoint the Cause of Diseases

Accurate Proteome-wide Missense Variant Effect Prediction with AlphaMissense

Google DeepMind AI Speeds Up Search for Disease Genes

DeepMind Is Using AI to Pinpoint the Causes of Genetic Disease

DeepMind’s New AI Can Predict Genetic Diseases

All of Us Genomic Research Program Hits Milestone of 250,000 Whole Genome Sequences

Expanded genomic dataset includes a wider racial diversity which may lead to improved diagnostics and clinical laboratory tests

Human genomic research has taken another important step forward. The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research program has reached a milestone of 250,000 collected whole genome sequences. This accomplishment could escalate research and development of new diagnostics and therapeutic biomarkers for clinical laboratory tests and prescription drugs.

The wide-reaching program aimed at gathering diverse genomic data is giving scientists access to the nearly quarter million whole genome sequences—as well as genotyping arrays, long-read genome sequences, and more—to aid precision medicine studies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced in a news release.

The NIH’s All of Us program “has significantly expanded its data to now include nearly a quarter million whole genome sequences for broad research use. About 45% of the data was donated by people who self-identify with a racial or ethnic group that has been historically underrepresented in medical research,” the news release noted.

Detailed information on this and future data releases is available at the NIH’s All of us Data Roadmap.

Andrea Ramirez, MD

“For years, the lack of diversity in genomic datasets has limited our understanding of human health,” said Andrea Ramirez, MD, Chief Data Officer, All of Us Research Program, in the news release. Clinical laboratories performing genetic testing may look forward to new biomarkers and diagnostics due to the NIH’s newly expanded gene sequencing data set. (Photo copyright: Vanderbilt University.)

Diverse Genomic Data is NIH’s Goal

NIH launched the All of Us genomic sequencing program in 2018. Its aim is to involve more than one million people from across the country and reflect national diversity in its database.

So far, the program has grown to include 413,450 individuals, with 45% of participants self-identifying “with a racial or ethnic group that has been historically under-represented in medical research,” NIH said.

“By engaging participants from diverse backgrounds and sharing a more complete picture of their lives—through genomic, lifestyle, clinical, and social environmental data—All of Us enables researchers to begin to better pinpoint the drivers of disease,” said Andrea Ramirez, MD, Chief Data Officer of the All of Us research program, in the news release.

More than 5,000 researchers are currently registered to use NIH’s All of Us genomic database. The vast resource contains the following data:

  • 245,350 whole genome sequences, which includes “variation at more than one billion locations, about one-third of the entire human genome.”
  • 1,000 long-read genome sequences to enable “a more complete understanding of the human genome.”
  • 413,350 survey responses.
  • 337,500 physical measurements.
  • 312,900 genotyping arrays.
  • 287,000 electronic health records.
  • 15,600 Fitbit records (data on sleep, activity, step count, heart rate).

The research could lead to:

  • Better understanding of genetic risk factors for disease.
  • Development of predictive markers for disease risk.
  • Analysis of drugs effectiveness in different patients.

Data Shared with Participants

Participants in the All of Us program, are also receiving personalized health data based on their genetic sequences, which Dark Daily previously covered.

In “US National Institutes of Health All-of-Us Research Program Delivering Genetic Test Results and Personalized Disease Risk Assessments to 155,000 Study Participants,” we reported how the NIH had “begun returning personalized health-related DNA results” to more than 155,000 study participants. In addition, participants who requested their results will receive genetic reports that detail whether they “have an increased risk for specific health conditions and how their body might process certain medications.”

“Through a partnership with participants, researchers, and diverse communities across the country, we are seeing incredible progress towards powering scientific discoveries that can lead to a healthier future for all of us,” said Josh Denny, MD, Chief Executive Officer, All of Us Research Program, in the news release.

Cloud-based Tool Aids Access to Data

The All of Us program makes a cloud-based platform—called Researcher Workbench—available to scientists for the study of genetic variation and other issues, Inside Precision Medicine explained.

“[Researchers] can get access to the tools and the data they need to conduct a project with our resources in as little as two hours once their institutional data use agreement is signed,” said Fornessa Randal, Executive Director, Center for Asian Health Equity, University of Chicago, in a YouTube video about Researcher Workbench.

A paper published in Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science titled, “The All of Us Data and Research Center: Creating a Secure, Scalable, and Sustainable Ecosystem for Biomedical Research,” noted that  the diseases most often being studied by researchers using All of Us data include:

Database’s Growth Good for Precise Diagnostics

For diagnostics professionals, the growth of available whole human genome sequences as well as access to participants in the All of Us program is noteworthy.

Also impressive is the better representation of diversity. Such information could result in medical laboratories having an expanded role in precision medicine.  

—Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

All of Us Research Program Makes Nearly 250,000 Whole Genome Sequences Available to Advance Precision Medicine

US National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program Delivering Genetic Test Results and Personalized Disease Risk Assessments to 155,000 Study Participants

All of Us Research Hub

All of Us Researcher Workbench

All of Us Program Expands Whole Genome Data Available to Researchers

All of Us Releases Almost 250,000 Genomes

All of Us Data and Research Center Creating a Secure, Scalable, and Sustainable Ecosystem for Biomedical Research

Mapping Out the Human Genome

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