Polygenic risk scores reduce the impact of common disease through increased precision in risk assessments.
Health systems are leveraging PRS, the latest advance in precision medicine, to improve health outcomes and increase patient satisfaction through more personalized and effective disease risk management.
Uncover patients’ hidden risk
Current risk prediction for common disease focuses on clinical risk factors, such as smoking and high cholesterol for heart disease, and rare pathogenic mutations in single genes like BRCA1/2 for breast cancer. But many patients at high risk still go undetected and suffer the effects of these diseases. By integrating Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS) into risk prediction, health systems can identify significantly more patients at high genetic risk, allowing data-drive decisions to inform more effective primary prevention strategies.
Risk prediction models which fail to account for PRS have potentially devastating consequences: many patients at high risk of diseases like breast cancer and Type 2 Diabetes are invisible to existing assessments and are incorrectly classified as having low or average risk. As a result, these patients are not prescribed with appropriate preventative strategies. This hidden risk is estimated to be present in more than 10% of the population for some diseases.*
Enable data-driven prevention strategies
Polygenic Risk Scores advance precision risk prediction by more effectively classifying risk that can improve patient outcomes and minimize the impact of chronic diseases. If a patient’s overall risk is more accurately identified, physicians are able to provide better care and prescribe more effective prevention strategies to reduce the patient’s susceptibility to developing complex diseases like Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer’s and more.
In the case of heart disease, PRS can identify patients at high risk despite having average cholesterol levels and no additional risk factors. These patients can then be appropriately prescribed therapeutic or lifestyle interventions, significantly reducing the onset of heart attack.
Improve rankings
A key clinical application of PRS is their capability to identify a greater number of patients at risk for a range of chronic diseases, including coronary artery disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and Type 2 Diabetes. These high risk patients are currently undetected by existing risk models which fail to account for the genomic factors in risk assessment. By relying solely on rare pathogenic mutation carrier status, family history, and other clinical risk factors, many patients at high genetic risk go undetected.
