A review of new science, in plain language

Nature Communications  ·  4 July 2026  ·  From issue 02

The new DNA test found a cause in 11 of 31 patients with no prior diagnosis.

Dennis Yeow, Andre L. M. Reis et al., Targeted long-read sequencing enables comprehensive analysis of the genetic and epigenetic landscape of inherited myopathies, Nature Communications.

A new DNA test found answers for over a third of patients whose muscle disease had no known cause. Muscle diseases can come from many kinds of gene changes. Some changes are tiny. Others are large or oddly shaped and hard to spot with older tests. Scientists built a test that reads long stretches of DNA at once. This lets it catch many different kinds of changes in a single pass. When tested on a group of patients, the new test worked better and gave clearer results than older methods.

Integrity screen: passed (3 checks) Checked 6 July 2026. Retraction record: none. DOI resolves at doi.org. Metadata record found (Nature Communications). Read the source

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