Stories

By taking into account an individual’s genes, lifestyle, and environment, precision medicine offers the prospect of finding individualized therapies that might ultimately cure diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Yet, as with other technological revolutions, precision medicine’s quest for innovation bumps up against a host of legal issues—for patients as well as laboratories and providers of care.

A recent Mayo Clinic study has found that many U.S. health care providers are habitually ordering a mostly unnecessary, and quite expensive, genetic test to identify a patient’s hereditary risk of venous thromboembolism.

A team of Mayo Clinic pathologists have discovered a new tissue biomarker, DNAJB9, for fibrillary glomerulonephritis, a rare kidney disease of unknown pathogenesis and poor outlook—nearly half of all patients end up on dialysis within four years of diagnosis.

In the war against microbes, human beings are vastly outnumbered—and losing the weapons race.

Greg Widseth was suddenly hit by a rare disease that prompted his immune system to attack his brain cells, resulting in as many as 60 seizures a day. Special blood and spinal fluid tests developed by Mayo Medical Laboratories confirmed that Widseth had antibodies known to target certain brain cells.