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What's New - Diabetes & Heart Disease Kaiser Permanente's Center For Health Research To Study Diabetics' Genetic Risks Of Heart Disease (PORTLAND, Ore.) – Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research (CHR) announced today that it is collaborating with Interleukin Genetics, Inc. (ILGN) to study genetic differences among people who have type 2 diabetes to determine their relative risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Results of this study will enable Interleukin Genetics, a Massachusetts-based pharmacogenetics company, to develop new diagnostic tools for assessing diabetic patients' genetic risks for heart disease. Knowing which diabetic patients are most at risk for heart disease will allow physicians to make more informed treatment decisions. "Cardiovascular disease is the most serious and costly complication of diabetes," says Jonathan Brown, PhD, senior investigator at CHR and principal investigator of the study. "Most people with type 2 diabetes eventually develop some form of heart disease. Once they develop heart disease, the cost of their medical care and their disability rises as much as 400 percent. So it's extremely important to prevent heart disease from occurring or to delay it as long as possible. Lowering LDL-cholesterol with statin drugs, aspirin, and other drugs is now known to be effective. We also know that practicing healthy behavior - eating a low-fat diet, getting more exercise, quitting smoking - helps prevent heart disease. What we don't know is which patients with diabetes will benefit most from early and aggressive preventive treatment. This study is designed to give us that knowledge." Drawing from CHR's diabetes registry, Brown and his CHR colleagues will ask 1,500 current Kaiser Permanente members who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before 1997 to participate in the study. The goal is to recruit 1,000 adults aged 21-80. Participants will be asked to sign an informed consent, complete a short questionnaire, and provide CHR two saliva samples (buccal swabs) that will be sent to Interleukin Genetics for genetic analysis. CHR will code and blind these samples so that ILGN personnel cannot link samples to individual identities, data, or medical records. ILGN will analyze the coded samples for the presence or absence of markers for the inflammation-related interleukin-1 (IL-1) gene cluster, which has been associated with an increased risk of heart attacks. Using the genotyping data provided by ILGN, CHR researchers will then link the genetic profile of each individual to his or her five-year medical history (1997-2002) to determine if the presence of IL-1 polymorphisms led to a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease and to higher medical care costs. The size of the study population will allow CHR researchers to analyze patients' relative risk for heart disease according to IL-1 status, age, sex, ethnicity, and how long patients had diabetes prior to 1997. "We are extremely excited about this study with Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research," said Philip R. Reilly, CEO of Interleukin Genetics. "We are hopeful this study will lead to a product that can be used as a tool by the health care industry to better target their resources in a manner that also results in enhanced health outcomes for patients. We also believe that the product of this study will offer an enormous opportunity to statin manufacturers to target a segment of the diabetic population not currently being treated." This study is the first of a number of studies on the genetic basis of inflammation-related diseases planned as part of a research collaboration, announced in December 2001, between Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research and Interleukin Genetics, Inc. Financial terms of this study were not announced. For more infomation contact: Released: March 11, 2002 |
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© 2002-2003 Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research/All Rights Reserved
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Updated 11 Mar. 2002 |