23andne GENE TEST

[tummyache]

Has anyone tried the "23and me" Gene Test? [https://www.23andme.com/health/] and more info: [http://darkdaily.com/23andme-submits-genetic-test-applications-with-the-fda-80612#axzz2NpvV3GJO]. I am thinking of doing it as it is much less expensive than Baylor or U Boston. They test for over 200 diseases, one of which is HFI for $99. Anyone have any experience with them?

[charlie]

Yes, several new members are trialling it, if you put 23andme into the search and should come up with their posts, they are fairly recent ones. Serene I think is one of them.

[tummyache]

Thank you Charlie. I'm going to do the 23andme gene test. It will be interesting to see if the test verifies what I was told years ago about being "fructose intolerant", along with anything else it may turn up. Perhaps, I'll even get a clue about that long lost Grandfather. Ha!

[khethma]

I tried 23andme back in January. The HFI test came back negative for me, but their test only covers 75% of the known genes, so it didn't rule HFI out for me. It just didn't confirm it like I'd hoped.

However, I have to say that the service is fantastic! I am really enjoying all of the health information as well as the ancestry information.

The test is really easy to do, and it arrived very quickly, even up here in Canada. It took about 7 weeks to get the results back once they received my sample back, but they apparently had a high volume of customers after they dropped the price to $99.

In any case, the results are fantastic. Very informative and very, very interesting. They provide good basic explanations of each result and then provide more detailed reports and links to the publications on the science behind the results.

They are also very careful with the scary ones like the Alzheimer's and breast cancer genes. You can only access your results on those by going through some extra steps to unlock those results, so you won't open up your results and suddenly be confronted with the news that you have a high risk for Alzheimer's or something like that.

The results are also very reassuring even when you do come back as a high risk for something. Most genetic risks are mitigated by a lot of other factors, so even if you carry a genetic risk of something, they explain how much and in what ways lifestyle can reduce your risk. You also have to consider that many of the genetic disorders are age related so your lifetime risk might be slightly high, but the risk doesn't really start to become significant until you are over 50 or 60 or 70 years old.

Anyway, all in all, I was really pleased with the service and the results provided. You also get to fill out all sorts of interesting surveys about yourself that are really fun and informative. So, even though I didn't get the results I was looking for on the HFI test, I still think it was money well spent.

Heidi

[charlie]

So did they test for everything then, not just HFI?

[khethma]

Yes, it's a very comprehensive test. It tests your carrier status for HFI and a whole bunch of other genetic disorders (ones that are caused by specific gene mutations that they can test for).

It also gives you your genetic risk factors for a lot of different illnesses including different cancers, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, etc. Most of them just show whether, genetically, you have an elevated, average, or lower risk compared to the general population. The information is based on population studies that show that people with certain genes are more likely to develop certain illnesses (usually, it explains how the genes can cause the illness, if that's known). And it indicates how much of your chances of developing a given disorder are based on genetics and how much on other factors. For example, you might have an elevated genetic risk for a certain type of cancer, but it might be that only 20% of whether or a not a person gets that cancer is based on genetics and the rest is based on environmental factors like exercise, lifestyle, whether or not you smoke, where you live, what you do for a living, what other illnesses you have, etc.

The test also provides information about physical traits such as eye colour, hair colour, etc.

And, it gives your ancestral breakdown, meaning it shows rough percentages of how much of your DNA comes from certain areas/racial backgrounds (e.g., in my case, it showed what percent is northern vs. southern European, what percent is English/Irish, German/French, Eastern European, Spanish, etc.).

It's really very fascinating. I was startled to discover that I'm about 3-4% Spanish. I had no idea how since nearly all if my ancestors were from England, Scotland, and Ireland and one branch was from Poland. Then, my mom told me that there was a branch of my grandfather's family from Spain.

Anyway, I found the risk factors very enlightening and quite reassuring and empowering. They do a good job of explaining that, in most cases, the risks are just that: risks, and not predictions or diagnoses.

It was well worth the money. I'm thinking of ordering kits for my husband and my parents and brother, too.

By the way, it's not a cheek swab. It's actually a saliva sample. You keep spitting into a test tube until you fill it to a certain point. Then you snap this special lid closed so that it adds some sort of preservative to the sample. Then you screw on a different lid, shake it a bit, put it in a special baggy, put it in the courier envelope with some forms you have to fill out, and send it off with the courier. The hardest part of the whole thing was that I had to go make some photocopies of a couple of the forms.

Anyway, I found the whole experience to be very positive and, as I said, even empowering.

Heidi

[denverjay]

I have had the 23andme saliva test done. It did come back positve for HFI, but would not tell me the exact mutation I had, just one of the four they test for.

Everything Heidi mentions in the above post is accurate for the balance of the testing.