Clinical Uses of Common Genetic Variants Associated with Common Diseases.

Polygenic risk scores and pharmacogenomics hold potential for improving prevention and treatment of common diseases, despite limited clinical impact so far.

• Why it matters: Understanding genetic contributions to adult-onset conditions is crucial because current genomic tools have yet to significantly influence diagnosis and therapy, limiting personalized medicine.
• What they did: The authors review the slow integration of genomewide association study findings into clinical practice, focusing on the potential of polygenic risk scores and pharmacogenomics as genome sequencing becomes more affordable.
• The result: Advances in these areas could enable more effective disease prevention and tailored treatments, paving the way for broader clinical application of genetic risk assessment in common diseases.