Can Genes Predict Health Risks?

Would you pay $1000 to know everything there is to know about your genes? The option may be coming to a doctor’s office near you very soon.

Currently there are ways to find out all about your genome for under $10,000, but that price is going to drop significantly in the near future. There recently has been a process developed for patients who desire to know a little more about themselves to obtain this information for around $1000.

So, how did this all come about, you ask? When a 19-year-old cousin died suddenly in his sleep, Stephen Quake, PhD, a Stanford University bioengineer, began to wonder if he had the possibility for the same fate. He gathered his genome and took it to Euan Ashley, MD. Ashley runs Stanford’s hypertrophic cardiomyopathy center.

Ashley told WebMD of the process, “This made me start thinking about what doctors are supposed to do when a patient walks into your office, shows you his whole genome, and asks, ‘What is in my crystal ball?’ It’s a challenge. Lots of people have looked at human genomes, but nobody had ever looked at a single patient before.”

With the thought in their head, they assembled a team of researchers to go over all of the available information on Quake’s genetic risk and then evaluated millions of the variations in his genetic code. Researchers were able to use this information in order to tell Quake what he is at risk for as well as what medicines he is more likely to respond to.

While critics say that these tests cannot confirm whether or not someone is destined to suffer from different diseases, it is good to have an idea of what you should stay away from.