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Genome Sequencing of the Healthy

Posted in Cell Biology, Signaling & Cell Circuits, Chemical Genetics, Computational Biology/Systems and Bioinformatics, Genome Biology, Health Law & Patient Safety, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2013| 3 Comments »

Genome Sequencing of the Healthy

Curators: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

Key Issues in Genome Sequencing of Healthy Individuals
Eric Topol, MD, Genomic Medicine

I briefly review 3 important articles that recently appeared, each touching on important controversies in the use of whole genome sequencing
http://www.linkedin.com/…/Key-Issues-in-Genome-Sequencing-218

http://boards.medscape.com/.2a38676f!comment=1

I briefly review 3 important articles that recently appeared, each touching on important controversies in the use of whole genome sequencing:
1. Should Healthy People Have Their Genomes Sequenced At This Time? Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2013.
2. A Genetic Code for Genius? Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2013.
3. Francke U, Djamco C, Kiefer AK, et al. Dealing with the unexpected: consumer responses to direct-access BRCA mutation testing. PeerJ. 2012;1:e8. DOI 10.7717/peerj.8
Welcome to another segment on genomic medicine. Today, I want to get into 3 different articles: 2 from the Wall Street (“Medical”) Journal and the other from a new open access journal, PeerJ. All of them are related to the issues of genome sequencing.
First, there was a debate about whether all healthy people should have their genomes sequenced. It was a debate between Atul Butte from Stanford and Robert Green from Harvard. In this debate, they made a number of really good points, and I have linked you to that article if you’re interested.
Basically, is it too early to get sequencing because we need millions of people to have whole genome sequencing who are healthy in order for that information to be truly informative. The price continues to drop. So even though the sequencing that is done today would still be valid if it’s done accurately, the problem we have, of course, is a lack of enough people who are phenotyped with a particular condition to extract all the best information that is truly informative from whole genome sequencing.
 it’s unlikely that even 2000 individuals with high IQ will be particularly informative but also, of course, what this could do from a bioethical standpoint. I’ll leave that to your imagination and thoughts as to where this could go – that is, trying to understand, even with limited power, the genomics of intelligence.
The third article, which is also very interesting, comes from this new journal called PeerJ. I’m on the editorial board of that journal, and I think it’s terrific to see open access, high-quality biomedical articles.
This one comes from the company 23andMe. From a very large number of individuals – now over 200,000 and rapidly approaching 1 million – who have had genome scans, a large number of women had information about the BRCA gene and whether they had a significant mutation. From these women who volunteered to participate in this study, we learned that they had no serious psychological repercussions from knowledge of this highly actionable BRCA pathogenic mutation.
This goes along with the previous study that we had done at Scripps led by my colleague Cinnamon Bloss in the New England Journal of Medicine, where, in thousands of individuals who had genome scans and had such data as ApoE4 status known to them for the first time, there were no significant negative psychological repercussions.

Should Healthy People Have Their Genomes Sequenced At This Time?

‘Patients in Waiting’

Injecting so much uncertain genetic information into the doctor-patient relationship could create legions of “patients in waiting” leading to unnecessary tests, harmful outcomes and lifelong anxiety. As private software companies compete to provide more genomic “findings” to a medical culture that is trained to search for diagnostic fire when they smell the smoke of disease risk, there are potential benefits. But there is also a real possibility that medical resources will be squandered and patients could be harmed.

Perhaps we all underestimated how complicated it would be to move genomic knowledge into the practice of medicine and public health. Now is the time to make sure we get this right through rigorous basic and clinical studies that define which mutations are dangerous, and distinguish useful from unnecessary interventions. Soon, genomic insights will give us early warnings about life-threatening illnesses that we may be able to prevent. Soon, standards will be available to guide doctors about which findings are meaningful and which are not.

Soon, there may be evidence to support the benefits of screening healthy individuals. But not today.

SOURCE:
Related articles
Table 1. Performance values for genome sequenc...

Table 1. Performance values for genome sequencing technologies including Sanger methods and Massively Parallel Seqeuncing methods. Sinville, R. and Soper, S. A. High resolution DNA separations using microchip electrophoresis. J. Sep. Sci. 2007, 30, 1714 – 1728 Morozova,O. and Marra, M. A. Applications of next-generation sequencing technologies in functional genomics. Genomics. 92 (2008) 255–264 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

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