Manic Depressionand Home Genetic Testing
Currently, more than 1,000 at-home genetic tests exist for a wide variety of health problems. And now there's one specifically for detecting manic depression.
The product is the brain child of Dr. John Kelsoe, who as a psychiatric geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, discovered several gene mutations that are closely tied to manic depression. His company is called Psynomics.
This trend of testing your genes in the comfort and privacy of your own home worries some health officials, medical ethicists and physicians. For starters, many of these professionals are concerned that the products - many of which may be purchased over the internet, as with Dr. Kelsoe's - are actually short on data, but big on exploiting the inherent fears of people.
Dr. Muin Khoury, director of the National Office of Public Health Genomics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained it this way: "People are always rushing to the market on the basis of one or two studies. We have very little evidence that telling people their genetic information is going to make any difference.
Genetic testing is now available for everything from manic depression, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Similarly, there are genetic tests to determine your athletic ability and a person's ideal diet. Psynomics' attempt to determine manic depression though is one of the first psychiatric gene tests on the market.
And even the product's developer, Kelsoe, admits that manic depression does not have a single point of origin. It develops, most probably, he says because of a combination of genetic factors as well as life experiences. The presence of the genetic variations his test looks for doesn't necessary mean the individual will acquire manic depression.
He also admits that his research in regards to genetic testing and manic depression is not complete. But it is a starting point, he says, in an attempt to move from the "notoriously tricky" practice of diagnosing manic depression solely on the reporting of a person's behavior.
He explains that the goal of his product "is to . . . help doctors make an accurate diagnosis more quickly so the patient can be treated appropriately."
For the $399 cost of the test, consumers receive a plastic cup that they spit into, seal and send back to Psynomics. The company then analyzes the DNA in the saliva. The company does not send the results back to the individual however. Psynomics only sends the results to the person's doctor. Kelsoe and his company are trying to avoid a situation where an individual diagnoses himself with manic depression.
The test also explicitly states that at this stage of development, the genetic test is of rather limited use. It is only valid for whites of Northern European ancestry who not only already display symptoms of manic depression, but already have a family member suffering from manic depression.
