Friday, February 6, 2009

UPMC Doctors Warn Personalized Genetic Testing May Be Too Soon

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center doctors caution that products claiming to use genetic screening to predict a person’s risk level for certain diseases may not be very accurate. Dr. Daniel Weeks, primary researcher of the study says though genetic screening can paint a vague picture of the human genome, it cannot accurately predict disease risk levels. He says he tried using genetic screening to classify individuals with diseases and found it to be 31 percent inaccurate. Dr. Weeks is careful not to dispute the importance of genetic screening entirely. He says screening could help doctors in other areas in the future.

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