Biomarkers of Genetic Susceptibility

Biomarkers can also be used to identify factors that increase the likelihood that an individual will develop disease. This is an important area of research in molecular epidemiology as it becomes more evident that not all risk factors will contribute to disease equally across the human population. Therefore, in order to determine whether an environmental agent is related to disease, those factors that are also required for disease development need to be taken into account. Otherwise, many disease risk factors may go undetected. Examples of susceptibility factors that can be ascertained using biomarkers are some viral infections, which may predispose to specific diseases (for example, HIV infection and Kaposi sarcoma) or HBV infection and liver cancer. Biomarkers can also be used to measure dietary factors that can contribute to disease. The most common susceptibility factor studied using a molecular epidemiological approach are hereditary factors, which are discussed in the following section. 

The challenge for molecular epidemiological studies on genetic susceptibility consists of identifying which of these genetic variants can contribute to disease risk and also identifying which ones can modify the effect of environmental exposures. Until now, the approach that most studies have taken to answer these questions has 

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