In a paper published online in the journal Nature, a team of deCODE scientists detail a major mechanism through which genetic factors contribute to major public health problems.
In its work on the inherited components of dozens of common diseases, deCODE has discovered gene variants that significantly affect individual susceptibility or protection against disease. In the common forms of these conditions -- such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases -- deCODE has previously shown that genetic variants confer increased or decreased risk by upregulating or downregulating the activity of major biological pathways. As a result, these variants place individuals on a spectrum of risk, with most of the population clustered at roughly average risk and a smaller number of people at either significantly higher or lower risk.