Return of incidental/unanticipated omics

The MGB Biobank returned actionable genetics results to 256 participants, 76.3 percent of whom were unaware that they carried a variant that put them at increased risk. The New York Times reports on this return of results process, outlining that some participants wanted to learn this information and others did not.

“Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics on Monday, the study describes takeaways from an effort by BWH’s Genomes2People (G2P) program to disclose actionable genetic results to research participants who volunteered to contribute to the Mass General Brigham Biobank.”

“Should people who volunteer for genomic studies be told about unrelated disease mutations that turn up in their sequence data?”

Joint project between Ariadne Labs and Genomes2People to create implementation pathways, tools and guides that work across various clinical contexts.

“I would have never known that I was at risk if i hadn’t donated to the Biobank,” said Kristine Trudeau who knowingly enrolled in the Partners HealthCare Biobank because she wanted to help advance medicine and potentially save lives. She did not expect that it would save her own.

Kristine Trudeau agreed to donate a sample of blood to the Partners HealthCare Biobank, a resource for researchers across the Partners hospital network — including the Brigham and Massachusetts General. By analyzing large numbers of blood samples, scientists can learn how genes contribute to disease. Trudeau shares her experiences as being one the many participants … Continued

“All of the crimes that are currently unsolved, which have DNA evidence, there’s now a pathway to trying to locate these perpetrators,” says Dr. Robert Green, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School.