In the past, experts have been concerned about how much genetic information to share with patients who are otherwise healthy, based on the potential for misunderstanding or making serious health choices based on their genes, senior author Dr. Robert C. Green of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston told Reuters Health by phone.
“There’s an inaccurate stereotype that DNA is destiny,” Green said.
Genetic sequencing, which used to cost three billion dollars, now costs about $1,000, he said, or about 923 euros.
“People who choose to get (Alzheimer’s risk) information actually do very well, even though there’s no treatment or prevention,” he said. “But if you start off wanting to know Alzheimer’s risk information, and get surprised with information you completely didn’t expect, how will you react?”
“This mimics the way a lot of genetic testing is going,” Green said. “You might get tested for a heart problem and might find out you have a risk for cancer. Is it ethical to surprise people with that?”
It would be risky to generalize the results of this study to every kind of genetic risk, he said.
“If we’re talking about setting up approaches for the general population, I think emphasizing the results that we are confident about and that we can do something about should (be) put at the top of the list,” said Dr. Michael F. Murray of the Geisinger Health System in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania.
“If the question is, ‘Should we go in and find that some people might be at risk for Alzheimer’s disease but they can’t do anything about it, or should we look at breast cancer risk, which they can do something about,'” most people would choose to learn about their breast cancer risk, Murray, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new results, told Reuters Health by phone.
A healthy person who is very motivated and has the resources may still want to know their genetic risk for Alzheimer’s, and should be able to find out, but until a treatment or way to prevent the disease is developed, it’s not a test that should be done for the general population, Murray said.
