You just sent in saliva to be tested in a gene lab to find out what you are likely to develop as you get older. And when the results arrive you find you have a faulty gene, giving you a 15 times more likely chance than the average person to develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Devastating right? Wrong.
According to research begun in 2000, the Risk Evaluation and Education for Alzheimer’s disease (REVEAL) study set out to answer the question for AD. The study’s authors chose AD because there is currently no treatment.
Using standard psychological testing materials, they found that patients for the most part were not affected by the dire results. After being tested three times a year following the bad news, it was found they weren’t anymore depressed than when they began the study.
However, Kenneth Offit, a cancer geneticist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, says the AD results may not be applicable to other diseases. AD is usually a late-onset illness, he notes, whereas breast cancer can affect much younger patients–and thus news of being at high-risk for breast cancer may be more traumatic. “There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to genetic testing,” he says.
