{"id":31193,"date":"2023-05-09T09:47:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T16:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sop.washington.edu\/?p=31193"},"modified":"2023-12-12T09:05:13","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T17:05:13","slug":"choice-team-co-authors-study-supporting-routine-genomic-testing-for-young-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staff.washington.edu\/twentzel\/wordpress\/choice-team-co-authors-study-supporting-routine-genomic-testing-for-young-adults\/","title":{"rendered":"CHOICE Team Co-Authors Study Supporting Routine Genomic Testing for Young Adults"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers from The Comparative Effectiveness, Policy & Economics (CHOICE) Institute in the Department of Pharmacy recently published a simulation modeling study in Annals of Internal Medicine<\/em><\/a> that urges U.S. health policymakers to consider routine genomic testing of all adults aged 40 and younger for three genetic conditions posing high risk of devastating illness.<\/p>\n

According to co-Principal Investigator and Professor David Veenstra<\/a>, beginning to routinely screen young adults for genetic risks would be a historic step toward precision medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile these conditions are relatively rare, affecting about 1.5% of the population, affected individuals have very high risk of developing future disease and should be offered the effective preventative interventions that are available,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In addition to Veenstra, The CHOICE Institute team consisted of first author and Senior Scientist Gregory Guzauskas, MSPH, PhD; and PhD student Shangqing (Joyce) Jiang, MPH. They were joined by collaborators led by Josh Peterson<\/a>, MD, MPH, Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; and Jing Hao, PhD, MD, MS, MPH from Geisinger Health, headquartered in Danville, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The team reported age-based cost-effectiveness of hypothetical one-time, all-in-one screening of U.S. adults aged 20 to 60 for three conditions: 1) hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome, 2) Lynch syndrome (the most common cause of hereditary colorectal cancer), and 3) familial hypercholesterolemia, which increases blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and the likelihood of coronary heart disease and stroke at a younger age.<\/p>\n

These three genetic conditions are designated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having the most evidence to support use of genetic testing for early detection and intervention. Testing for any of these conditions, when done at all, is currently limited to patients with a high-risk family history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key lesson of the study is that we should be bundling genetic disorders into the same screening panel and testing individuals in advance while they are a young adult and prior to any disease onset,\u201d said Peterson.<\/p>\n