This webinar explores rare disease, the journey patients take when looking for an explanation for their rare disease symptoms and the role genetic counselors play along the way.
Read Story
Have you ever wondered what causes mental illness, or thought about genetic testing for a condition like depression, schizophrenia, OCD, or bipolar disorder? It can be frightening to ask these questions, but the answers are often more reassuring than you might expect.
These are exciting times in the growing field of genetic counseling. While prenatal and preconception and cancer-risk counseling remain our bread and butter, clearly our skills and expertise can benefit infinitely many more people. Genetic counseling is a conversation that leads to action.
Whether or not to have genetic testing is complicated. What will it tell you? What will you do about it once you get the results? Will having that information help you or not? That’s why the insight and guidance provided by a genetic counselor is invaluable.
When I explain my job as a genetic counselor to family members or people I talk with while traveling, they are always surprised to learn that I meet with patients only one or two times. Some patients may have annual follow-up visits with their genetic counselor and geneticist
If you’ve been reading the news, you know that last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the marketing of 23andMe Personal Genome Service Genetic Health Risk tests for 10 genetic diseases or conditions, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and celiac diseases. What you may not know is
Approximately 7 million ancestry tests have been ordered by curious consumers, most of those in the past few years. That’s a lot of DNA! While many people may choose ancestry testing to find out more about their ethnic background, that’s just one result that can come from an online DNA test.
Direct-to-consumer genetic tests – kits you buy in a drug store or online and involve mailing a saliva sample – have been around for about 10 years, and they are getting more and more attention. While taking the test is simple, understanding the results and living with the knowledge genetic testing brings is not. Are these tests right for you?
On a recent flight, I sat next to a passenger* who asked what I did for a living. After telling her I am a genetic counselor who specializes in hereditary cancers, the conversation turned into a curbside consult about her family health history. It ended with a big surprise for her.
Why take heredity to heart? It’s simple – heart disease is the number one cause of death for men and women, and is highly preventable! It’s also quite common to have a hereditary predisposition to heart disease in your genes.