A new genetic test — known as a polygenic risk score — looks at a collection of thousands of genetic variants which, when looked at together, might point to those who are likely to have heart attacks. A new genetic test takes aim at young hearts:
Katie Elkins, whose doctor recommended she get a new kind of genetic test to better assess her risk of a heart attack, in Philadelphia, May 25, 2023.
Cardiologists hope to use such tests, which cost about $150 and are not typically covered by health insurance, to identify people most likely to have heart attacks long before they have them. Some doctors envision testing children as part of routine pediatric care. Others, like Dr. Rita F. Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, the editor at JAMA Internal Medicine and a critic of the overuse of statins, is concerned that polygenic risk scores could introduce new problems.The label, she added, “inexorably leads to tests and a search for treatments.” And, she said, “because the person, who now has become a ‘patient,’ is asymptomatic, more tests and possible treatments in most cases will not make the person feel any better.
Dr. Iftikhar Kullo of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, asked, “Do you actually improve long-term outcomes” by using the tests and acting on them? “We need more studies that focus on younger people with follow-up over several decades,” she said. If risk scores in young adults predict a greater likelihood of a heart attack, she asked, will that prediction be borne out when the people are older, at ages when heart attacks are more likely? Or will those with high risk scores instead be needlessly worried about their hearts?
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