What will a dna test show

Most of the time, these tests can tell you if your DNA shows variations that make you predisposed to developing a disease or condition. But this type of result is a lot different than saying you're definitely going to get a disease. This is especially the case when it comes to diseases where your genes and lifestyle choices play a role in whether you get it. Results from a SNP test are just one piece of the puzzle, while other factors like your diet, fitness level, blood pressure, and environment also contribute to whether you'll get that disease.

Currently, the FDA says that some DNA tests are approved to share information regarding a person's genetic health risk for developing 10 medical conditions , including Parkinson's disease, celiac disease, Late-onset Alzheimer's a progressive brain disorder that affects memory , along with several blood-clotting and tissue disorders.

Still, Feero noted much the mainstream medical community remains uncertain about how accurate and useful these polygenic risk scores are in predicting whether someone will get a disease. Often the increased risk predicted only accounts for a small amount of the total risk a person has for developing a disease. He added that it's important to consider these genetic risk scores only account for one portion of your risk. Many consumer DNA tests now provide people with information that isn't related to whether or not they have a serious genetic disorder.

SNP testing can detect variations in a person's genome that are associated with different traits that aren't necessarily diseases as well as medical conditions, said Feero.

As is the case for diseases in which multiple genetic variants play a role, the associations for traits are made based on research that has linked genetic variations in certain populations to these traits.

For example, some test results might tell a person if they're predisposed to lactose intolerance or moving around when they sleep. Take these tests with a grain of salt. It's important to note these trait tests, as well as SNP-based tests for disease risk, do have limitations. Feero pointed out that one issue with these consumer tests is that they only test for a limited number of relatively common genetic variants. This can be problematic if you're someone from an underrepresented population because your results might not be as accurate as those for someone from a population group that has been extensively studied for associations between variants and traits and diseases.

And even if you are from a population that has been well studied and is highly represented in available research databases, it's important to remember these SNP-based test results are not considered a medical diagnosis.

But that doesn't mean they can't be beneficial to you. Learning that you may be predisposed to a certain trait might influence you to make positive lifestyle changes that can improve your health overall. For instance, if you learn that you're more likely to have a higher weight than the average person, you might feel inspired to work out more often at the gym or start a new fitness plan.

In addition, some results may encourage you to have important conversations with your doctor about your diet or fitness plan. But as far validity goes, perhaps it's best to take these types of results with a grain of salt. It took us, like, 20 minutes.

And the more we laughed, the harder it was to do. It was May , and she and her now husband had ordered the kits as very early Christmas presents for themselves.

They were saving for a fertility treatment and had only recently moved to Florida from New York. And so she and her husband came to be cracking up, spitting into their individual vials. In bed one night six weeks later, they pulled up the results from AncestryDNA on the laptop. This is you. Since launching in May , AncestryDNA says it has tested more than 10 million people in 30 countries. All of them are racing to grow their databases and their accuracy.

The kits that screen for genetic health risks can deliver equally devastating results. Yet all of these tests are typically taken in a spirit of casual curiosity. People are not prepared to have their lives rocked by what they may find out.

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Yet it also undercuts their marketing, which implies that their tests reveal something fundamental about you. Another limitation: These reference groups are largely based on people who are self-reporting their ancestry. Prior to this past summer , 23andMe could only match people to just three broad regions in sub-Saharan Africa, which is an enormous area with a lot of geographic and ethnic diversity.

This is where computer programs come in. This also is imperfect, with a range of error. The computer programs are also sensitive to the small errors built into the genotyping process. But your dad may not pass on to you all the genes he inherited from, for example, the Sardinian side of his family. Of course not. DNA is not the same as heritage. But not everything about our family histories is geographic.

Human history is a messy, migratory affair, much too complicated to track simply using our DNA. And the exact percentages of where our DNA comes from may not matter either.

If your sibling inherits slightly more Scandinavian DNA than you, does that make them more Scandinavian? For these reasons, many are uncomfortable with the idea of heritage as something that needs to be corroborated with DNA evidence — or that people belong to a certain ethnic group based on a trivial amount of ancestry.

DNA ancestry opens a small door into our past. We can learn things like the fact that many tens of thousands of years ago, humans and Neanderthals mated, though we can only speculate and in fascinating ways as to why.

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