Study to Track How People React to Disease-Risk Data
A research group and three healthcare and technology companies are teaming up to fund a 20-year, 10,000-participant study on how people react to their risks of developing certain conditions, such as diabetes or cancer. Cardiologist Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, is the study's principal investigator. At the beginning of the study, participants will complete a health behavior questionnaire before receiving their genetic disease risk results. They will report their psychological and physical response three months after receiving the information, and again after the first year. For the next 19 years, the participants will report their responses to the data every one or two years, with the final data comparing their health behaviors before and after receiving their risk results. Investigators hope that recruitment will be finished by the end of 2008, with some early results available by mid-2009.
