Division of Genetic Medicine

Coronary artery disease and major depression may be genetically linked via inflammatory pathways to an increased risk for cardiomyopathy, a degenerative heart muscle disease, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital have found.

Study authors used activity, clinical and genetic data from the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program to explore the association of genetic risk of higher body mass index and the level of physical activity needed to reduce incident obesity. 

Douglas Ruderfer, PhD, whose research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center explores the intersection of genomics, biomedical informatics and psychiatry, has been named director of a newly established Center for Digital Genomic Medicine.

A U.S.-Canadian research collaboration led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center has identified common, age-associated changes in the blood as a risk factor for acute kidney injury, which occurs in more than 1 in 5 hospitalized adults worldwide.

An international genetic study using multiancestry biobanks has identified novel genetic locations associated with primary open-angle glaucoma, the most common type of glaucoma and the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally.

An analysis of genomic data from nearly 250,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program has identified more than 275 million previously unreported genetic variations, nearly 4 million of which have potential health consequences.

A comprehensive study that integrates multiple analytic approaches has linked a regulatory gene network and functional defects in insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells to Type 2 diabetes.