Vanderbilt researchers have discovered that a genetic predisposition to elevated body mass index increases the risk of diastolic dysfunction — a cardiac condition that can lead to heart failure.

Large-scale studies will be required to identify the complexity of genetic variations that affect how patients respond to a given drug and whether they will have side effects, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

A Polygenic Risk Score — a genetic assessment that doctors have hoped could predict coronary heart disease (CHD) in patients — has been found not to be a useful predictive biomarker for disease risk.

A study by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has strengthened the link between thyroid function and atrial fibrillation (AF), an irregular heart rhythm that increases the risk of stroke and other heart-related complications.

What do medical biomarkers do on evenings and weekends, when they might be considered off the clock?

In a study in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, Vanderbilt University’s Jonathan Mosley, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues use genetic correlation to hitch together two unrelated sets of data, one from a longstanding epidemiological cohort and the other from electronic health records.