INHERITED genetic conditions could be tested better in the future thanks to the work of scientists at Oxford University.

Experts worked alongside their counterparts from Royal Brompton Hospital to discover better methods to interpret the significance of gene mutations in patients.

It manes that more diagnoses may now be made through genetic testing.

The researchers compared genetic data from nearly 8,000 patients who had the heard condition cardiomyopathy with the aim of understanding the role different genes play in causing it.

They discovered rare variants in some of the genes were not any more common in cardiomyopathy patients than in the general population.

This showed they are unlikely to cause the disease and also demonstrated that having rare gene variants is more common than previously thought.

Cardiomyopathy affects about one in 500 people in the UK and causes the heart to stop pumping blood as efficiently as it should, which can lead to heart failure or an irregular heart beat.

Professor Hugh Watkins, head of the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at Oxford University, said: "These results will help diagnostic laboratories avoid testing genes that can't be interpreted reliably and be more confident in interpreting variants in the genes that we have shown to be valid."