24 August 2019

23andMe upgrade offer

If you previously tested with 23andMe perhaps you received this email:

As an early adopter of 23andMe, you were genotyped on a previous version of our chip and don’t have access to all our newly released reports and features. You can now upgrade to the most recent version of our chip - V5 - to receive the latest Health + Ancestry Service experience.

Buy a Chip Upgrade for C$150 (the regular price is $199US for new testers)  and receive:

The latest Health Service reports*
Type 2 Diabetes (Powered by 23andMe Research), Familial Hypercholesterolemia and more.

The latest Ancestry enhancements
Get refinements to Ancestry Composition, including newly added populations and Ancestry Detail Reports.

A better sharing experience
Easily compare your reports with friends and family members who were recently genotyped.

At the same time, an email arrived from a friend who also received the offer with a one-word comment

EXPENSIVE !!!!

Did you notice the asterisk above? It indicates the following fine print; emphasis added.

*The 23andMe PGS test health predisposition reports include both reports that meet US FDA requirements for genetic health risks and the 23andMe Type 2 Diabetes health predisposition report which is based on 23andMe research and has not been reviewed by the FDA. The test uses qualitative genotyping to detect select clinically relevant variants in the genomic DNA of adults from saliva for the purpose of reporting and interpreting genetic health risks. It is not intended to diagnose any disease. Your ethnicity may affect the relevance of each report and how your genetic health risk results are interpreted. Each genetic health risk report describes if a person has variants associated with a higher risk of developing a disease, but does not describe a person’s overall risk of developing the disease. The test is not intended to tell you anything about your current state of health, or to be used to make medical decisions, including whether or not you should take a medication, how much of a medication you should take, or determine any treatment. For important information and limitations regarding each genetic health risk report, visit 23andme.com/test-info/.

If you want to dig deeper into the upgrade there's more information and a sample report at www.23andme.com/dna-health-ancestry/.

I'll not comment on the value of the medical part of the test except to suggest considering the option of having Promethease analyze your data.

The Ancestry part of the service provides "where your DNA is from out of 1000+ regions worldwide - and more.
35+ reports including:
Ancestry Composition Ancestry Detail Reports Maternal & Paternal Haplogroups Neanderthal Ancestry."

A sample Ancestry Composition report doesn't appear to be greatly different from previous, the 1000+ regions worldwide are more than previously provided.

However, in looking again at my previous test I see they are now highlighting many more regions there too. Seven of ten sub-regions mentioned within the UK are ones where I have paper-trail ancestry, but there are also some missing. None of the ten given for Ireland correspond to my suspected possible ancestry.

There is no information to tell whether the maternal and paternal haplogroup or Neanderthal ancestry resulta are changed. Neither is there information to indicate any change in the Relative Finder capability.

The description of this upgrade fails to convince me it's worth the money.












1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I knew that 23&Me was about medical stuff before, but had never heard of Promethese and took a look at a sample Ancestry DNA result. Oddly interesting, but oh, what a field day it would give to hypocondriacs. Cheers, BT