Aug. 22, 2012 Over the last 50 years, the spotting of newborn's
blood onto filter paper for disease screening, called Guthrie
cards, has become so routine that since 2000, more than 90% of
newborns in the United States have had Guthrie cards created. In
a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have
shown that epigenetic information stored on archived Guthrie
cards provides a retrospective view of the epigenome at birth, a
powerful new application for the card that could help understand
disease and predict future health. DNA methylation, an
epigenetic chemical modification of DNA, is known to affect gene
activity and play a role in normal development, aging, and also
in diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. "But
are these epigenetic marks involved in causing the disease, or a
result of the disease itself?" asked Dr. Vardhman Rakyan of
Queen Mary, University of London and co-senior author of the
study. Rakyan explained that this is impossible to know when
samples are obtained aft