Psychiatric Genetic Testing

Psychiatric Genetic Testing

An interesting article about a company that sells a bipolar disorder genetic test. Or more accurately, a genetic test that identifies for some people that they might be at heightened risk of bipolar disorder:

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Dr. John Kelsoe has spent his career trying to identify the biological roots of bipolar disorder. In December, he announced he had discovered several gene mutations closely tied to the disease, also known as manic depression.
Then Kelsoe, a prominent psychiatric geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, did something provocative for the buttoned-down world of academic medical research: He began selling bipolar genetic tests straight to the public over the Internet last month for $399.
His company, La Jolla-based Psynomics, joins a legion of startups racing to exploit the boom in research connecting genetic variations to a host of health conditions. More than 1,000 at-home gene tests have burst onto the market in the past few years.

They quote some skeptics who are uncomfortable with these tests because the data isn't terribly complete yet on the claimed connection between the genes and the disease--and it turns out that only some people can use this test:

Psynomics will send patients' test results only to their doctors to avoid the risk of self-diagnosis.
The report that accompanies those results instructs doctors that a positive test means patients are two to three times more likely to have bipolar disorder. But the studies from which those figures come also show the gene variations themselves are rare even among those with bipolar.
The report also points out that for now, the test is valid only for whites of Northern European ancestry who show some behavioral symptoms and have at least one other bipolar family member.

I'm not keen on the use of genetic testing to "brand" people--especially since we don't entirely know what causes particular people to develop the disease in a full-blown form--and others do not. But there is some advantage to knowing that you are risk for a particular disease. For example, if you know that you are genetically predisposed to colon cancer, you may want more regular colon cancer testing than the average person.