Vanderbilt Unveils DNA Databank-Flint Adam

You may know someone who's had an adverse reaction to a certain prescription or vaccination.

Until now, it's been hard for doctors to determine who may suffer from the medications meant to help them, but a new project at Vanderbilt Medical Center could eliminate the guessing game.

In December, Fox 17 told you the story of Suzanne Hogan.

The 45 year-old woman suffered an adverse reaction to the H1N1 flu shot, telling us, "(My body) just feels numb. Almost if you keep your hand in ice too long and it gets that cold feeling. My whole body feels like that"

She had a rare reaction to a shot most people receive without suffering any side effects, and therein lies the problem.

Vanderbilt Medical Center researcher, Dr. Dan Masys says, "We practice medicine based on averages, assuming that everybody is pretty much the same - but we know that everybody is not the same."

That principal drove a team of Vanderbilt researchers to spend the past five years creating a project they consider a game-changer.

Vanderbilt has opened the nation's largest DNA database - called BioVu.

They've collected 75,000 DNA samples from willing patients.

All that DNA is kept on digital file, and supercomputers quickly sort through it.

You benefit when your DNA profile is compared to DNA in the database.

Doctors will have a better idea of how your body will react to medications and whether you should avoid some completely.

"Instead of treating everyone like they're average, we'll treat people who are more susceptible to serious reactions to drugs differently from people who are likely to have good reactions to drugs," says Dr. Dan Roden.

BioVu becomes more efficient as more samples are collected, and that aspect of the work is ongoing.

Vanderbilt plans on gathering a total of 250,000 samples.

"Just this month, we've started adding samples from pediatric patients, that is individuals less than the age of 18, and that will be a tremendously important scientific resource," says Masys.

The fruits of this labor aren't far away, either.

Researchers believe you'll benefit from BioVu within the next year.

"The tools are in place to allow investigators to start to use this to help us understand all the questions we need to answer in order to allow us to use genetic information to help drive better health care for the individual patient," Roden says.Vanderbilt Unveils DNA Databank-Flint Adam