Especially taking into account that knowing some data available via such tests in an earlier stage of life and acting on it could be quite beneficial in a long run.
Whole genome data won't give you health information beyond SNPs because the studies used to generate the health claims use SNPs, because they're cheap.
But there is very little useful data available from SNPs, anyhow. What kind of data do you believe is available and what actions might you take?
If the baseline is a 30% chance of dying of heart disease and it told you that you had a 70% chance, what would you do differently? (but it won't.) Probably you should already be doing it because 30% is a big number!
If the baseline is 0.1% chance of MS and it told you that you have a 0.2% chance of MS, what would you do differently?
The only thing it might tell you that is useful is that you have a high chance of developing what is otherwise a rare disease. It will probably tell you that you have a mildly broken BRCA and have a 22% chance of breast cancer, rather than a 20% chance. That is worthless, even if it is true. But if you're Ashkenazi, there is a 1% chance that it will tell you that you have a fully broken BRCA. That means an 80% chance of breast cancer, which is really not that different from a 20% chance. But it also means aggressive breast cancer at a young age. This is really a different disease. It is a substantial chance of death at a young age. Many women get prophylactic mastectomies. The Dutch have the same 1% base rate as Ashkenazi, but 23andMe does not test for them (at least as of v3). Thus whole genome sequencing can detect the 1% of Dutch with fully broken BRCA and the 1/10,000 of other populations. But those base rates are silly. If you have this gene in your family, you should know already from the high prevalence of breast cancer, especially young fatal breast cancer.
Also, there's a SNP that predicts how fast you metabolize drugs. That sounds useful, but no one takes advantage of it. More generally, it is quite rare that people experiment with doses of drugs, which they really should.
If you do get a whole sequence, you can test every gene to see if it is fully broken ("nonsense mutation" as opposed to the mild "missense"). If you have such a gene, it probably is a big deal, but it will probably be hard to interpret.
If the baseline is a 30% chance of dying of heart disease and it told you that you had a 70% chance, what would you do differently? (but it won't.) Probably you should already be doing it because 30% is a big number!
That line of argument is flawed because actions have costs.
To give a simple example (and discussing whether it's precisely correct is besides the point), you can take baby aspirin to reduce the risk of heart attacks. Aspirin is a blood thinner, it makes clots (which cause heart attacks) less likely. However decreasing coagulation is not an u...
Hi, I was considering possibility of undergoing some kind of genetic testing for a while now. But I hesitated because I have a quite limited financial resources available right now. Eventually I've figured that in the future I'd do it anyway, so why don't just do it right away. Especially taking into account that knowing some data available via such tests in an earlier stage of life and acting on it could be quite beneficial in a long run.
So after that realization I've thought about going with 23andme and performing SNP genotyping. But in the process of browsing related information I've encountered article about rapid decreasing in price for Whole genome sequencing. After that I've found this listing: https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/whole-genome-seq?page=2 and the lowest price tag there is $795 (but it's not clear whether that particular option is applicable to human genomes).
And as a result the whole WGS thing seems quite appealing, but I have some concerns here. I still have quite limited finance and WGS seems to have at least 10x prize in relation to SNP. And the other concern is data applicability (more on this one further).
Information about what and how you can do with WGS data is somewhat scarce on the Internet. So I have some questions here:
I know that for SNP tests there are tools like Promethease (http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) that allow you to analyze your data. But I was not able to find anything about tools for analyzing your WGS data.
So are there any good tools available for you to analyze your WGS data? And: Is it computationally feasible to get results in an adequate time, using a general pc for this purposes?
And finally with all above said: should I go for whole genome sequencing/SNP/or my whole line of reasoning is invalid and I should wait for now and get WGS in a few years for a smaller price?
(My main concern here is positive influence on health in a long run.)
Thanks.