Medical experts warned consumers in comments published on Wednesday to be careful about genetic tests that purport to forecast various diseases, saying they added little value beyond what consumers already knew. Risk factors like smoking, lack of exercise, age, hypertension and family history were regularly more reliable predictors, said researchers in Australia, who published their remark in a paper in PLoS Medicine. "Studies done for diabetes, heart disease and common cancers have recognized a large number of genes associated with increased risk of developing," said lead writer Wayne Hall, a professor at the University of Queensland Center for Clinical Research.
"But the charge and enlarged risk of any one of these genes is often trivially small. It's not information you can perform on," he said by telephone. There have been long-term studies tracking huge numbers of people over time to see if those with certain gene mutations go on to enlarge associated diseases, but Hall said such genetic information was no greater in predicting disease. "In general, adding the genetic information doesn't recover on the ability to forecast over and above what you know about existing risk factors," he said. "So knowing that you smoke, blood pressure, your gender, family history and age.
They are still good predictors of disease risk and genetic information regularly doesn't do as well as those fairly crude predictors of disease risk." The note of caution comes as patrons are swamped with offers of genetic tests many on the Internet that purport to expect many different kinds of diseases. "I wouldn't purchase some of these tests myself. They have very restricted use and if I have reason to suspect I have some gene that is powerfully predictive of disease risk, I will go through a proper genetic testing curriculum because there is very small value in these genome-wide scans that are being marketed," Hall said.
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"But the charge and enlarged risk of any one of these genes is often trivially small. It's not information you can perform on," he said by telephone. There have been long-term studies tracking huge numbers of people over time to see if those with certain gene mutations go on to enlarge associated diseases, but Hall said such genetic information was no greater in predicting disease. "In general, adding the genetic information doesn't recover on the ability to forecast over and above what you know about existing risk factors," he said. "So knowing that you smoke, blood pressure, your gender, family history and age.
They are still good predictors of disease risk and genetic information regularly doesn't do as well as those fairly crude predictors of disease risk." The note of caution comes as patrons are swamped with offers of genetic tests many on the Internet that purport to expect many different kinds of diseases. "I wouldn't purchase some of these tests myself. They have very restricted use and if I have reason to suspect I have some gene that is powerfully predictive of disease risk, I will go through a proper genetic testing curriculum because there is very small value in these genome-wide scans that are being marketed," Hall said.
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