Companies are marketing polygenic risk scores as part of IVF well ahead of a full understanding of the potential benefits — or dangers.
fertilization so that it can be screened for genetic disorders.The emergence of companies that offer prospective parents complex genetic tests on embryos ahead offertilization has alarmed geneticists and bioethicists alike. The companies claim to be able to predict the risk of many common diseases — including those influenced by dozens or even hundreds of genes. People undergoing IVF are then offered the chance to select an embryo with a perceived low relative risk of developing such diseases.
The ambition is that, as genetic studies continue to sample populations more broadly and more deeply, polygenic risk scores will become more refined, and could eventually be used to guide treatment and prevention strategies. But there’s a consensus that the scores are not yet ready to be used beyond research studies.
Furthermore, scientists do not yet fully understand how the selection of embryos with a lower relative risk for one disease might influence susceptibility to other conditions. Genetic variation can have a number of effects — a phenomenon known as pleiotropy — and a DNA sequence associated with one beneficial characteristic could also increase the risk of a detrimental one.
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