Abstract
An exponential growing number of individuals are accessing genetic risk information via direct to consumer companies. Alcohol dependence is the third most accessed genetic risk score on a publicly available direct to consumer website. Better understanding of the degree to which individuals are interested in receiving personalized genetic feedback, the factors that relate to interest, and genetic knowledge will be critical to lay the foundation for precision medicine initiatives, especially for substance use and psychiatric outcomes, where less is known. To assess interest in receiving genetic feedback for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and understanding of genetic concepts related to psychiatric conditions, we conducted a survey with participants recruited from a registry that enrolled incoming cohorts of freshmen at an urban public university; 205 participants (76.5% female; 58.9% self-reported as White; Mage = 24.48 years) completed the survey. Results indicated that participants are highly interested in receiving genetic feedback for AUD (79.0%) but there is a lack of understanding of complex genetic concepts in a sizable proportion of the sample (25.4%). Additional research is needed to assess how to address this lack of knowledge before genetic feedback for AUD can be returned in a way that benefits the individual.
Highlights
Genome-wide association studies are rapidly increasing our understanding of the complex genetic architecture of alcohol use disorder (AUD), as well as related substance use and psychiatric conditions [1,2,3,4]
Genome-wide polygenic scores for AUD created from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) studies index an individual’s overall genetic risk across the genome, which can aid in identifying individuals at-risk for AUD to help improve current prevention strategies and aid in earlier intervention
Race/ethnicity was not associated with interest in receiving genetic feedback for the other substance use and psychiatric conditions, suggesting that racial/ethnic differences were specific to interest in receiving genetic feedback for AUD
Summary
Genome-wide association studies are rapidly increasing our understanding of the complex genetic architecture of alcohol use disorder (AUD), as well as related substance use and psychiatric conditions [1,2,3,4]. One goal of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) is to generate findings that can be used for enhanced clinical prediction in the future [5,6]. Genome-wide polygenic scores for AUD created from GWAS studies index an individual’s overall genetic risk across the genome, which can aid in identifying individuals at-risk for AUD to help improve current prevention strategies and aid in earlier intervention. Despite the low predictive ability of current genome-wide polygenic scores, personalized genetic information is already being provided to increasingly large numbers of the public [8]. User data from one of these popular websites (impute.me) illustrates an exponential increase in accessing genetic
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