MyHeritage, the Israeli family history and DNA testing, today announced a significant expansion of its genetics activities.
The company has launched a new kit called MyHeritage DNA Health + Ancestry, to provide genetic insights that can improve the health of the users.
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The Health + Ancestry report provides a variety of diseases in which a specific gene is a risk factor – monogenic diseases such as hereditary breast cancer and later development of Alzheimer’s disease And Parkinson’s; Recessive hereditary diseases that couples may transmit to their children, such as Tay Sachs and Cystic Fibrosis, and diseases with a complex genetic component – polygenic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
The kit covers a wide range of diseases and includes 11 reports on dominant genetic risk factors, including a report on hereditary breast cancer (BRCA), which examines 10 pathogenic mutations, 15 reports of hereditary diseases and 3 Risks from a complex genetic disease.
The World Health Organization has identified the cardiovascular disease as the number one killer in the world. This makes the MyHeritage report particularly useful, as the user is given a breakdown of the genetic risk of these diseases, based on a new method of machine learning called the Polygenic Risk Score, which examines hundreds, and in some cases Thousands of genetic markers across the entire genome. In addition to heart disease, the kit also includes a similar risk report for type 2 diabetes, a disease that has increased in recent decades and now affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including 40% of the US population.
The user is given a breakdown of the genetic risk of these diseases, based on a new method of machine learning called the Polygenic Risk Score, which examines hundreds, and in some cases Thousands of genetic markers across the entire genome.
The new MyHeritage kit also providing a multi-gene report that measures the risk of breast cancer, which provides a risk assessment for breast cancer even when none of the specific BRCA mutations that the assessment is testing is found.
The new product is based on scientific research conducted by Prof. Yaniv Erlich, Chief Scientist of MyHeritage.
