Is commercial DNA testing worth the price?
It is my opinion that they are not currently worth the money unless you have a known risk of a rare genetic disorder. We don’t have enough information on which risk factors are important to make the tests useful yet. We also don’t know how to translate that knowledge about risk factors into treatments or preventative actions. So companies like 23andMe can tell you “This SNP means that you have slightly higher risk of diabetes”. So what does that information do for you? Well, pretty much nothing. The genetic counselors can tell you to eat a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise, but you should be doing that anyway – you don’t need a 1000 dollar test to tell you that. The big payoff is going to be 5-10 years down the road, when these mutations begin to be better understood. Then we’ll know which mutations are really important, and even better, many of them will be druggable targets. Until then, the only reason that you should get a test is if you have spare cash laying around and want
My son developed schizophrenia at 26: the window is wider than 18 to 21. For females, the window is wider still, well into their 40th year. Environment seems to have a great deal to do with the onset of symptoms: substance abuse, for one, seems one of the triggers of psychotic episodes, so SNP’s are only part of the story. Genetic testing can be helpful for specific cancers (breat and ovarian), while preventive medicine is more useful at this stage for others (colon cancer and colonoscopy, for example or Type II diabetes and proper diet). Testing should involve a geneticist and a genetic counselor able to explain the results, which are not as simple as ” you have this gene, you risk is this%” Some diseases such as triple repeats require genetic counseling before undertaking the test. I would suggest an appointment with a genetic counselor or a geneticist before hav
If you wouldn’t be financially strained by spending $1000 and you’d be more at ease regardless of the results, then I’d say, yes, it’s worth it. If you think you’d find something debilitating that you can take active steps to significantly reduce your chances of getting, then I’d also say it’s worth it (in hospital bills alone!). It’s the spending lots of money to learn about something you have very little ability to impact and that only adds to your worries that I don’t think is worth it. So only you can do that calculus. I’ve looked into dna/genetic testing for my immediate family (and 23andMe in particular as well as some other services), and right now I don’t think it’s worth it for me–even with histories of breast cancer and leukemia in the family. I have enough written and oral medical family history that I can get a glimpse of my genetic chances of things and neither is effectively treated in advance of actually developing it. For instance, I wouldn’t get a preemptive mastectom
