Private companies have recently started to sell epigenetic tests to the public online, most of them without supervision by a physician. While the ethical and legal implications of direct-to-consumer genetic testing have received considerable attention over the past decades, other direct-to-consumer ‘omic’ tests have largely escaped scrutiny.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Researcher perspectives on ethics considerations in epigenetics: an international survey
Clinical Epigenetics Open Access 02 September 2022
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$189.00 per year
only $15.75 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Allyse, M. A. et al. Direct-to-consumer testing 2.0: emerging models of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Mayo Clin. Proc. 93, 113–120 (2018).
Kalokairinou, L. et al. Legislation of direct-to-consumer genetic testing in Europe: a fragmented regulatory landscape. J. Community Genet. 9, 117–132 (2018).
Gao, X. et al. DNA methylation changes of whole blood cells in response to active smoking exposure in adults: a systematic review of DNA methylation studies. Clin. Epigenetics 7, 113–123 (2015).
Molecular test of age highlights difficult questions: from forensics to sporting events, disputed age is a source of tension [editorial]. Nature 561, 5 (2018).
Wright Clayton, E. et al. The law of genetic privacy: applications, implications, and limitations. J. Law Biosci. 6, 1–36 (2019).
Philibert, R. A. et al. Methylation array data can simultaneously identify individuals and convey protected health information: an unrecognized ethical concern. Clin. Epigenetics 6, 28–34 (2014).
Hagestedt, I. et al. MBeacon: privacy-preserving beacons for DNA methylation data. Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2019.23064 (2019).
Backes, M. et al. Identifying personal DNA methylation profiles by genotype inference. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy https://doi.org/10.1109/SP.2017.21 (2017).
Dupras, C. et al. Epigenetic discrimination: emerging applications of epigenetics pointing to the limitations of policies against genetic discrimination. Front. Genet. 9, 1–6 (2018).
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. C.D. is also grateful to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a 3-year fellowship.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
C.D. and E.B. researched data for the manuscript. All authors contributed to discussion of content, writing, and reviewing/editing the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dupras, C., Beauchamp, E. & Joly, Y. Selling direct-to-consumer epigenetic tests: are we ready?. Nat Rev Genet 21, 335–336 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-020-0215-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-020-0215-2
This article is cited by
-
Researcher perspectives on ethics considerations in epigenetics: an international survey
Clinical Epigenetics (2022)