Medical Strategy or Marketing Strategy?

A well-known direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing company now has FDA approval to include a very limited form of BRCA testing with its DNA genotyping product. I refrain from mentioning the company’s name because they already got enough free press from the announcement. You probably know what company I am referring to, and if you don’t, well, follow the above link. Sorry Unnamed Company, but I am not going to make the free advertising that easy for you, no matter how insignificant the source. Besides, I see it as a bigger issue than just one company’s policy.

For now, the analysis is limited to the three BRCA1&2 mutations that are more common among Ashkenazi Jews. Actually, the company offered the same 3 mutation test until they were slapped with a cease and desist letter from FDA in 2013 to stop all medically related testing. So this new announcement amounts to a resurrection of a nearly decade-old policy, not a groundbreaking innovation. Funny, though, that there was not this much to-do when the test was first offered.

The genetic counseling community is in a bit of a dither about this, including me, though admittedly part of the reason I am writing this blogpost is to help me figure out just what I am dithering about.

Some of the concerns are obvious. People may be under the misconception that a negative result = no increased risk of hereditary breast/ovarian cancer and thus some high risk women may forego potentially lifesaving surgery and appropriate screening strategies. Then there is the worry that patients will not follow through with genetic counseling if the testing is positive, or that high risk patients will not seek genetic counseling and more testing if the result is negative. If you are not Ashkenazi Jewish, the test does not seem to offer much benefit. And even for Ashkenazi Jews, the testing does not include the ~10 other genes linked to hereditary breast cancer and the ~10 other genes linked to hereditary ovarian cancer.

The company recommends verifying positive results with an experienced clinical lab.  For that matter, then, why not verify a negative result, if there is that much uncertainty? Why bother having a test if you can’t fully trust the result? I suspect though that there is probably little reason to doubt the test result and that the company makes this recommendation to keep FDA happy and to minimize their legal exposure rather than concerns about assay validity.

Incidentally, the cost of the company’s product is really not much different than the more comprehensive multigene hereditary cancer panels offered by some of the clinical testing labs, and in some cases more expensive.

Eight years ago I shared my first experience with a patient whose BRCA carrier status was detected through DTC testing. My patient’s experience and a few more cases I encountered since then have not been that different than my patients who went through the usual counseling and testing process. A 2013 study by the company  showed that the 11 women and 14 men who discovered their BRCA status through DTC testing had experiences similar to my patients. That last statement is brimming with caveats – small sample size, at least for my patients they were savvy enough to want to see a genetic counselor, personality traits of the earliest users of new products, no long-term follow-up, etc. But I am not aware of any independent, large-scale studies of patients who learned their BRCA status through DTC testing to more definitively address the pros and cons, other than studies offering BRCA testing that targeted all Ashkenazi Jewish women.

I readily admit that I may be proven wrong, but I am guessing that most of the consumers of this DTC product – note they are not patients because the test is not intended for clinical use – will opt to learn their BRCA status. After all, people have this testing to learn about their genetic makeup. I am also guessing that this may be the company’s proverbial toe-in-the-water; I would not be at all surprised if additional clinically useful testing is part of the company’s future product and marketing plans.

At heart, I don’t like the idea of DTC BRCA testing. I think about all the ways it can go wrong, and inevitably some of those ways will come to pass. But will it go right often enough, and go wrong infrequently enough, that there will be adequate benefit to justify offering DTC testing? Undoubtedly, some of my uneasiness stems from a professional conflict of interest; DTC eliminates my role as an interface between patients and testing. Personally, I think being a middleman is a good thing because it can help patients take a thoughtful deep breath before leaping into the gene pool. But that could be because I have been trained to think that way and because it supports the value of my professional career. What I really should want is for patients to have access to genetic information in a manner that is affordable, accurate, psychologically and emotionally appropriate, and medically useful. If DTC and other forms of offering BRCA testing works for many men and women, then I should swallow my professional pride and acknowledge it.

So having stewed on this for a while, I have come to the realization that my argument isn’t with this company per se. Other companies aggressively market hereditary cancer and other genetic testing to average risk people. For example, one company approached my institution with the idea of offering their product to all women coming in for breast imaging, with saliva kits kept in the mammography center along with a prescription pad with a genetic counselor’s name on it acting as an ordering provider for the test (legal in my state). Although many labs employ genetic counselors who work directly with patients to review test results, this is still not the same experience as meeting with a genetic counselor before undergoing testing to explore the complex medical and psychological issues surrounding genetic testing. And the highly respected Dr. Mary-Claire King has advocated for population based genetic screening for establishing hereditary breast cancer risk. Are DTC clinical testing and other consumer-friendly strategies disruptive ideas that will bring about much-needed change or are they just bad but well-intentioned ideas that will also fill company’s coffers and keep investors happy?

Having sifted through and weighed my thoughts and feelings about DTC testing or other genetic test delivery models, I have concluded that my problem is not with DTC or other models per se. My argument is with how these new testing approaches are introduced into clinical practice, typically under some version of the banner of liberating testing and bringing it to the people. I do not doubt the labs’ sincerity when they say they are trying to improve access to medical care and reduce the suffering from cancer and other illnesses. But these are as much marketing strategies as they are medical strategies. Labs should not be calling the shots on the introduction of new tests and practice models because, in the absence of well designed studies, we really have no idea if these new approaches are effective in reducing cancer risks and increasing high risk screening when indicated, or if they are in the patients’ best emotional and psychological interests. Just throwing a mess of tests out there and encouraging everyone to take one is, in my view, irresponsible.

A better approach is to first conduct controlled and ideally randomized studies that evaluate both new and novel testing strategies to determine the most beneficial one(s) for patients, or if different types of patients benefit differently from different strategies. For example, age, family history, medical history, psychological functioning, and socio-economic status could all conceivably affect outcomes, not too mention the all too real possibility that many Americans may lose health insurance in the near future. While labs should play a critical role in that evaluative process, to keep it as clean as possible the studies need to be conducted and overseen by researchers who have no financial benefit from the outcomes of such studies.

We are in this together, so let’s work together.