Fall break. Before our blog will go on a two week hiatus, I wanted to share some ideas with you on the team it takes to get a clinical exome analyzed – my impression is that you need at least different five people to translate genomics into patient care. Continue reading
Tag Archives: acmg
Are there incidental findings in exomes that require immediate action?
Guidelines. High throughput sequencing generates an unprecedented amount of genetic data. Most exomes are generated in a specific context, i.e. the genetic data is screened for variations in specific candidate genes or screened for de novo mutations. However, these approaches only use a small fraction of the genetic data generated per individual. High-throughput sequencing may also reveal clues towards possibly relevant diseases, and there is an ongoing debate if and how incidental findings should be returned to individuals undergoing high-throughput sequencing. Now, a recent paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics uses a very stringent clinical approach to assess the frequency of medically actionable findings in exome data. The results are not what you would think, and there is an urgent need to fix the existing databases. Continue reading
Dealing with the genetic incidentaloma – the ACMG recommendations on incidental findings in clinical exome and genome sequencing
Clinical genome sequencing. While exome and genome sequencing is widely used as a research tool, these technologies are also routinely applied in a clinical setting. As with many other data-rich diagnostic tests in medicine, there is an ongoing question on how to deal with potentially relevant findings that turn up indicentally. Now the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) has released their long-expected recommendations on data return of incidental findings in clinical exome and genome sequencing. Their recommendations provide an interesting basis for discussion on what to do with genetic findings that are found by chance. Continue reading
