The Challenge of Multifactorial Disease with Complex Inheritance

The greatest challenge facing medical genetics and genomic medicine going forward is unraveling the complex interactions between the variants at multiple loci and the relevant environmental factors that underlie the susceptibility to common multifactorial disease. This area of research is the central focus of the field of population-based genetic epidemiology (to be discussed more fully in Chapter 10). The field is developing rapidly, and it is clear that the genetic contribution to many more complex diseases in humans will be elucidated in the coming years. Such understanding will, in time, allow the development of novel preventive and therapeutic measures for the common disorders that cause such significant morbidity and mortality in the population.