Brain_Hawk t1_jc58ayp wrote
Reply to comment by DrCunningLinguistPhD in Researchers have contributed to the largest ever genetic study of endometriosis, finding 42 genetic regions associated with endometriosis paving the way for new treatments. by No_Peanut_7102
"Identified signals explained up to 5.01% of disease variance "
I'm not going to read a whole genetics paper. I'm not saying it's bad research, this sort of work is important. But it is often oversold. They identified a candidate set of genes using a large publicly available data set, which often has minimal patient specific information on most disorders. I should have read more of the abstract but I stopped, I'm pretty sure they ran a gwas. Those identify associations but not causes. They're an important start point, but it's a very far lead from identifying. Some genes that are related to is disorder with a relatively small effect size and to building a treatment target that has any widespread application
I'm not stating any objection to what the researchers did, but I have a long standing objection to results like this being massively oversold both in the media and by the scientists themselves. It's very tempting, especially if you get a splash in nature paper. But it builds a lot of false hope, and it's unlikely that any of these candidate genes will see clinical trials and the next 10 years if ever
The most positive outcome for these papers, In my not too humble opinion , is that the identify potential targets for future more directed studies, they can examine the association with those specific genes with that disorder in detail
Edit: Happy the abstract says that too, more targeted studies are needed to confirm and better understand these associations
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