Genetics

The education of physicians is an endless cycle. Educators of one generation train students who become the educators of the next, in turn training the next generation. This passing of the educational torch usually occurs with little relationship between the people doing the training and the people being trained. Sometimes a satisfying connection shines through, though. That was the case when Laura Read more

You are a medical oncologist practicing in 2025 and your patient schedule for this sunny October morning includes two patients who present with different challenges. Improvements in cancer genomics have changed how physicians assess risk and how they diagnose and treat cancer. The first patient is a 60-year-old man with prostate cancer that was identified Read more

A recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be identified decades before clinical symptoms are recognized—through changes in clinical and biological markers. Approximately one in seven adults in the United States over the age of 70 has dementia, and one in 10 is affected by Alzheimer’s Read more

A study published in Nature shows that a rare gene variant can protect against Alzheimer’s. By sequencing the genome of about 1,800 Iceland residents, scientists were able to show that a precursor protein responsible for the clumping accumulations of brain plaques known as beta amyloid may actually prevent the disease. This means if this variant could Read more

This post was adapted from material Ms. Berko originally wrote for Autism Speaks. Over the last few years, several studies have shown that the average age of parents of children with autism is higher than the average age of parents of typically developing children born in the same time period. From this association, we learned that older parents Read more