July 10, 2012 | Elise

I don’t know much about my genes, but it turns out understanding our individual genetic make-up can have important medical benefits.

Doctors couldn’t understand why a drug that treats other autoimmune diseases made many people with multiple sclerosis (MS) worse. A variation in the code of a single gene linked to MS has been found to be the cause. Now patients with MS can be tested for this variant, and those who don’t have it might still use the drug.

This is a step towards ‘personalised medicines’ where individual genes would influence treatment.