Friday, December 10, 2010

Take your family's medical history!

Yesterday, my parents, both over age 70, visited me. While we sat around the table over coffee and cookies, I decided that this would be a perfect time to ask them about our family's medical history. I felt that this is important information for the times when I may need to supply such to a doctor of theirs or to my own physician. Also, I have recently submitted a sample so that my genomic DNA can be genotyped and I feel that if I wish to put any kind of risk assessment into perspective, I need to do so with my family medical history in mind.

So, what did I learn? Well, I learned a lot about going back to my great-grandparents, but the particular diseases and ailments are not important to my readers. I will share this though - I feel really good at having done this and sharing this information with my siblings. I encourage everyone to do the same. Sit down, ask and take notes. Then, share this information with those not at the table and with your own physician. It is important.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Gene-HDL associations modified by physical activity

A brief post here. I am simply listing a few genes/SNPs that associate with HDL-cholesterol in a manner modified by physical activity.



One can see from the above table (click for a larger view) that results of physical activity modifying the effects of APOE alleles is not consistent across populations. There are different risk alleles in the different studies. The EUROSPAN study under PubMed ID 20066028 did not give specifics of levels of physical activity nor identify the risk alleles.

If there is something that interests you in terms of measures of metabolic health (along the lines of heart disease, diabetes, blood lipids), just ask and I'll see what I can provide.