The Future of Healthcare
Diabetes Genetic Testing
Diabetes is one of the most common diseases afflicting Americans. Clear Bridge Biomedics offers a diabetes genetic test to determine if your diabetes is genetically linked. With this knowledge, a doctor can schedule a long-term preventative health care plan to improve quality of life.
GENETIC Diabetes TESTING
By using a genetic test for diabetes, doctors can identify the root cause of a family’s diabetes. The test also helps doctors determine individual relatives who are most at risk for developing the same condition.
PREVENT Diabetes
If your family has a history of diabetes, there are steps you can take to prevent developing it yourself. A healthy diet, exercise, not smoking, controlling your blood pressure, and getting a regular diabetes screen are all great preventive measures to help keep the heart healthy.
GENETIC diabetes
All types of diabetes can have a genetic component. This does not mean that having the genes for diabetes is a guarantee of developing the disease. Having the genetic markers only means you are more likely to develop the disease compared to another person.
Understanding your results
Genetic test results are complicated documents. Often, it takes an expert in the field of genetic counseling to help patients interpret the results and decide on next steps.
Take the first step to Diabetes Genetic Testing!
WHAT DOES THE DOCTOR SAY?
Numerous genetic links have been identified that contribute to varying disease severity within type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Type 1A DM is an autoimmune disorder where antibodies target and destroy the cells within the pancreas that secrete insulin. Some patients, however, will have evidence of destroyed pancreatic cells and absolute insulin deficiency, but no antibodies or obvious cause. These patients require the same treatment as Type 1A and are thus given the term Type 1B DM. Insulin is a hormone that allows cells within the body to absorb glucose (sugar), which is vital for metabolism. Type 2 DM is the most common form and typically, presents later in life with symptoms of insulin resistance and deficiency. While initially attributed to obesity and poor diet, new discoveries have revealed several key genetic links that predispose to disease. Monogenic (monogenetic) causes of type 2 DM account for only a small fraction of diabetic cases. Monogenic is a term that means a disease is caused by a single gene or allele instead of being influenced by several genes. The most common monogenic cause of diabetes is called maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY), where patients are diagnosed under the age of 25. They do not have antibodies against pancreatic cells, do not require insulin injections like patients with type 1, and pass on the disease to their children in an autosomal dominant fashion. They are frequently misdiagnosed as either type 1 or 2 DM.
– Dr. Danielle Kelvas, MD
Type 2 Diabetes Testing
Type 1 Diabetes Testing (Coming soon!)
MODY Diabetes Testing
Diagnostic Diabetes Testing
Trigger conditions for Genetic Testing?
Any patient diagnosed with diabetes during infancy
An abnormal diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes
Type 1 Diabetes without auto-antibodies
gestational diabetes with high fasting glucose
What Types of Diabetes are Genetic?
Diabetes is divided roughly into two distinct types. Type 1 diabetics are not able to produce the insulin that breaks down sugars in the body. Type 2 diabetics are insulin resistant. This means that the body was at first generating insulin, but because that insulin could not move all the sugar in their system, the body produced more insulin. Eventually, this increased production caused the pancreas to burn out on insulin production, leading to diabetes.
Scientists are not exactly sure how much of role genes play in the development of diabetes. They only know that diabetes does play a part. There are monogenetic forms of diabetes, which causes diabetes in young adults. Most estimates put the number of purely genetic diabetes cases at 5% of the overall diabetes cases in young people.
Other than monogenetic diabetes, most diabetic genes are passed down in the form of predispositions to diabetes. Both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes can be passed down genetically.
How do I know my results?
Getting the results of your diabetes genetic test.
You will have your results returned to you when the test is concluded at Clear Bridge Biomedics, but you might not know what to do with them. Most experts recommend contacting a genetic counselor before, during, and after your decision to take a genetic test for several reasons. 1) while there are no inherent physical risks to genetic tests, you may not actually want to know the results. The choice to know is sometimes a difficult one and should be considered thoroughly. 2) Genetic information is very complicated and not easily understood by the average person looking at a results spreadsheet. Genetic counselors help everyday people interpret the results in helpful and relevant ways, leading to informed medical decisions.
