Six year old is first participant in £300m health study

Scientists in Hampshire are taking part in a revolutionary £300 million pound project to better understand human DNA and find more ways of diagnosing and treating illnesses.

The research involves genetic screening on a mass scale - around seventy thousand people with rare conditions or cancer will be screened for the 100,000 Genomes Project. The University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust is one of the 11 centres conducting the study across the country.

The first family to take part in Hampshire is that of Maddison Cox. The six-year-old has had a range of unexplained health issues since birth. Scientists are hoping that studying the human genome - a three billion letter code that contains all the DNA information needed to make each one of us - will help them come up with more solutions, such as new drugs or different treatments, to address our health concerns. Andrew Pate reports.