23andMe and moderate risks
Sunday, June 8th, 2008At Think Gene, Andrew Yates has a review of 23andMe. Mainly about the web interface — that does look cool — but then he concludes:
The Disappointing
Of all the 70 possible traits described by the 23andMe test, no trait reported anything useful except perhaps a moderate (almost 30%) risk of rheumatoid arthritis.
The sad fact is that, for common SNPs, all risks we know of are small to moderate. If we knew how they interacted, maybe we could detect higher risks, but right now we only see small increases in risk in the SNPs we know about.
If you expect more, you will be disappointed indeed.
I think personal genomics is pretty cool, but I doubt it has any clinical relevance at this point. I could be wrong, of couse, but that is where I would place my bet.