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Don't be scared. It's just one little genome:
Advances in technology have made it much easier, faster and less expensive to do whole genome sequencing — to spell out all three billion letters in a person's genetic code. Falling costs have given rise to speculation that it could soon become a routine part of medical care, perhaps as routine as checking your blood pressure.
But will such tests, which can be done for as little as $1,000, prove useful, or needlessly scary?
The first closely-controlled study [DOI: 10.7326/M17-0188] [DX] aimed at answering that question suggests that doctors and their patients can handle the flood of information the tests would produce. The study was published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine.
"We can actually do genome sequencing in normal, healthy individuals without adverse consequences — and actually with identification of some important findings," says Teri Manolio, director of the division of genomic medicine at the National Human Genome Institute, which funded the study. Manolio wrote an editorial [DOI: 10.7326/M17-1518] [DX] accompanying the paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:51AM (5 children)
How far back do you have to go, so that blood pressure tests cost $1000?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:18AM
Not much. Say... next year? At the rate the heath insurance cost raises, we'll have regressed just enough by then to satisfy you.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:07PM (3 children)
At the rate gene sequencing costs are falling, they've been knocking a zero off that price every few years - one of the few things to radically outperform Moore's Law. It's not unreasonable to expect it to be not much more expensive than a more typical blood test within the decade.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:58PM (2 children)
I think the idea in your other comment makes a lot of sense. The DNA test will get rolled in as an optional extension of the blood test at almost $0 extra cost since the real costs will be shipping and handling, cold storage, labor, or automated robot labor. And you'll get a sense of the "population" existing in your blood. This would be partial sequencing at first, but would expand to include whole genome sequencing of everything in your blood. So the pathogens could be detected and compared with precision to known strains to determine what effects their mutations have caused. I'm not sure if viral DNA would be picked up... yes?
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:12PM (1 child)
It should be I think - viral DNA is still normal DNA, the only question would be whether the protein shell would need special consideration to rupture. Though, given the nature of viral replication, there may be plenty of "leftover" DNA free-floating through your bloodstream as well.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday June 28 2017, @09:01PM
Some viral genes are RNA rather than DNA. Some of the worst ones. (Still, that shouldn't be a big problem, except that RNA is less stable than DNA.)
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