There is a new genetic test that doctors are using to prevent heart attacks. Although the tests are promising, they do raise many questions. Some people believe that placing emphasis on treating younger people is not the best way forward. The reason being that they may neglect taking medication such as statins, or other drugs prescribed to them, for the rest of their lives. For young adults, it can be tough to focus on potential health problems decades into the future. Some patients of Dr. Rader’s have delayed taking polygenic risk tests even after they have been advised to do so.
Critics think that we should focus on the large group of elderly people who require medication to lower their cholesterol, but are not receiving it, or those who abandon their prescriptions. For instance, research showed that approximately 40 percent of people aged 65 or older who experienced a heart attack, and require lipid-lowering medicine for the remainder of their lives, stop taking statins within two years.
Dr. Rita F. Redberg, a cardiologist from the University of California, San Francisco, and editor at JAMA Internal Medicine, disagrees with the over-usage of statins, and thinks that using polygenic risk scores could create new problems.
“Labeling people with a disease can be problematic,” she said. According to her, the label will undoubtedly result in more tests and trials. Because the person has become a “patient,” they are asymptomatic. Additional tests and treatments typically don’t make the person feel any better. People may view themselves as healthy one day, but the next day they may see themselves as diseased. “They will begin to question whether their common aches, pains, and twinges are symptoms attributed to the ‘illness,'” said Dr. Redberg. “They may also visit the doctor, or emergency room, for certain things that they wouldn’t have done previously. This, too, will result in more testing and procedures with the associated risk of harm.”
