Of all the scientific advances made in recent years, DNA testing and DNA seq analysis has been seen a lot of growth. In fact, DNA testing has become a useful tool in many other industries, especially in the medical field and in law enforcement, where DNA profiling for criminal cases has been used for more than 30 years.
Another area of growth has been the rise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, which provides many benefits and also some limitations.
Benefits of DNA testing services include:
- The promotion of awareness of genetic diseases.
- They help folks to be more proactive about their health.
- They provide customers a personalized picture of their health and vital information about a person’s overall health, risk of disease and other genetic traits.
- DNA collection is easy and noninvasive and people get their results fast.
- DNA testing services are generally less expensive than the testing a healthcare provider offers.
- Use of DNA testing services doesn’t require the prior approval of a health insurance company or a health care provider.
- The data collected by DNA testing services can be used in medical research and can be added to a medical database for surveys.
Some limitations of direct-to-consumer DNA testing services include:
- This testing often cannot tell a person for certain whether or not they will get a particular disease.
- There’s a chance that some of the information that comes back is either inaccurate or incomplete, which means people are making potentially life-altering decisions based on incomplete information.
- Some of the information a person receives may be upsetting, especially as it results to ancestry and family medical history.
- Some unproven testing services can be misleading, giving people information that’s not exactly accurate.
- DNA testing results can have an effect on a person’s ability to gain several different types of insurance including life and disability insurance.
- A person’s genetic privacy may be compromised if the testing company has a data breach.
If you’re interested in your genetic history and are trying to get a better overall picture of your health, DNA buccal swabs have proven to be very effective. The buccal DNA collection kit has been designed to give increased yields of specific types of DNA and is a solid alternative to other genetic collection methods such as blood collection. With buccal swabs, DNA stays intact and can be collected quickly and easily.
More Stories