Genetic Testing?

[FLMountainMan]

Going to go ahead and get my DNA tested before the FDA gets involved and everything goes to sh*t. Has anyone does this? Who are the more reputable services? Any recommendations? Or even recommendations on where to get recommendations?

 

[Gradstudent78]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

Going to go ahead and get my DNA tested before the FDA gets involved and everything goes to sh*t. Has anyone does this? Who are the more reputable services? Any recommendations? Or even recommendations on where to get recommendations?

Tested for what?

 

[DeadDJ]

I'd just like to hop in and say this is genuinely one of the weirder threads I've ever seen from a non-spambot.

 

[JayJay]

Originally Posted by Gradstudent78

Tested for what?
+1. Why?

 

[trd6478]

http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery.../genomics.html http://www.councilforresponsiblegene...83&archive=yes

 

[Bartolo]

There's a reason the FDA will get involved -- there is no industry-wide standardization, and the "results" you get may well be meaningless.

What are you going to do in response to the results? Eat better, more healthy foods because you think you're predisposed to heart disease? Well . . . just go ahead and do that anyway. Not have children because you think they'll inherit something?? Well??

 

[Harold falcon]

Originally Posted by Bartolo

There's a reason the FDA will get involved -- there is no industry-wide standardization, and the "results" you get may well be meaningless.

What are you going to do in response to the results? Eat better, more healthy foods because you think you're predisposed to heart disease? Well . . . just go ahead and do that anyway. Not have children because you think they'll inherit something?? Well??

Predisposition to certain cancers can theoretically be detected. If you know you're at elevated risk for colon cancer, for example, it would make sense to get checked more often than the general population.

I don't know which service is best, but I'd be interested in others' experiences as well.

 

[Reggs]

Some radio show, maybe from NPR, had a journalist send his DNA to a bunch of different clinics that did this and got back different results from each one.

Science will figure this out in time, but for right now you wont find any reliable conclusions.

 

[Don Carlos]

Originally Posted by Reggs

Some radio show, maybe from NPR, had a journalist send his DNA to a bunch of different clinics that did this and got back different results from each one. Science will figure this out in time, but for right now you wont find any reliable conclusions.
+1 Your results are likely to be meaningless and unactionable, and besides, what diseases are you even hoping to screen for? Cancers of various types? Heart disease? Diabeetus? Alzheimer's? Given the nature of the Western diet and lifestyle, just assume the answer is "yes" on those. You're at risk. We're all at risk. Best to assume high risk, too. Get your diet game right, get your exercise on, and you get your regular screenings done, and you'll do the best you can. Given that genetics-based medicine is a long ways away, there is nothing you can do with the information you would get through today's testing. Also, LOL at the anti-FDA rant. You are such a Floridian redneck. In a cute, charming way! But still.

 

[Thomas]

I don't know that you'd learn a whole lot more about yourself and your predispositions by testing any more than you would from looking at your grandparents. For instance: two of my grandparents had heart attacks and a third had CHF, so I made it a point to stay active and changed my diet. Also, they all had a preference for whiskey over clear spirits, so again - the grandparents kinda set the tone for my present and future.

Then again, they all smoked like chimneys and ate a lot of bacon and lived into their 70's, and they probably put a nip of bourbon into my bottle as a wee youth, so the preceding post really ought to be taken with a grain of salt, unless of course you have high blood pressure.

 

[Sunnydale]

Well, as already mentioned 23 and Me does DNA health testing. Had mine tested, more for genealogy purposes, but it also reported tendencies I might have. Nothing scary to report. You might check out this forum sight. I've seen several mentions of others testing with 23 and Me there. http://www.eupedia.com/forum/index.php If looking to test your self for general conditions outside of a hospital, there is also http://www.directlabs.com/ or http://www.questdiagnostics.com/ Lots of home testing kits now available also. https://shop.trackyourplaque.com/Cat...ood_Tests.aspx

 

[Ataturk]

The price on these things has gone down quite a bit. You can get the 23andme test for $90 per kit if you do you more than one, $100 for just one.

They can tell you whether you are a carrier of various "hard" inherited genetic conditions (like cystic fibrosis), plus they look at various genes that are associated with things like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. The CF thing alone was worth the money given the history of that in my family.

There are a number of ancestry features, such as y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, which are reliable and interesting (but often can't tell you much). They do relative finder and ancestry results based on all your DNA, but these are dependent on algorithms that attempt to estimate how your DNA came to be, so you should take them with a grain of salt.

The relative finder claimed to have identified nearly a thousand distant relations of mine. In my estimation, it's dubious given that there's only about 400,000 people to compare you to, so it ID'd 1 in 400 people as being recently related to me. Then again I'm not sure what a fifth cousin is. It didn't find any close relatives. The default setting is anonymous, so you have to personally ask most people you're matched with for their names. I only had a handful of people I thought could be identifiable relations and none of them answered back.

The ancestry stuff is interesting but ought to be taken with a grain of salt. There's a few different things they do. "Genetic distance" where they map...something... compared with reference samples from various countries on a sort of east/west, north-south grid. They also have a "countries of ancestry" finder based on comparing your results to people who've done their test and identified all four of their grandparents as coming from one country. It was quite consistent with what I might have expected though it seems to have a bias toward countries where you'd have more recent ancestry. In other words, you're not likely to be matched with English people even if all your ancestors came from there 300 years ago, but if you have a grandparent from Eastern Europe, you're much more likely to get results on that one. And of course almost everyone who uses the service is American, so they have relatively few people to compare you to.

The ancestry composition thing is broadly accurate but gives improbably precise results. Someone I know was estimated to be 0.1% Amerindian, meaning one ancestor, ten generations back. That they can do that is improbable to say the least. On the other hand reading various sources online, there seems to be a consensus that these tests can detect interracial admixture up to about 5 or 6 generations back, meaning if have 3% or more admixture from another race they can reliably find it.

The sub-regional (i.e., Western Europe) or local (i.e., Iberian/French & German/UK) level of detail actually seemed to be pretty accurate for me given what I think I know, though it did detect substantial Iberian ancestry for me, which I didn't expect but seems very possible given that my family comes from Louisiana (everyone knows the French history but people tend to forget it was a Spanish colony for a long time).

Also, with 23andme you can download your entire DNA results in a plain text file (20+ mb!), which allows it to be interpreted by third parties, which is incredibly generous for the price.

 

[Gradstudent78]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/25/5143464/fda-orders-23andme-to-stop-selling-dna-test-kit

 

[Ataturk]

Glad the government's on top of this one. DNA testing should be the exclusive province of doctors.

$90 shouldn't even buy you the vial you spit in for the test.

 

[Ataturk]

Fun article:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=23andme-is-terrifying-but-not-for-reasons-fda