I mentioned a while back how nice it would be to have a mood reading credit card. Well humanity has taken one step towards that ideal with the advent of DIY tests for bipolar disorder. Yes, for only $399, Psynomics are offering a DNA “spit test” that will tell you if you have a genetic predisposition to bipolar disorder.
The company is headed up by John Kelsoe (who does have a fantastic surname) from UCSD, the guy who first published the link between mutations of the GRK3 gene and incidence of bipolar disorder. A mutation that occurs in only 3% of Caucasians with bipolar disorder.
So now his company has developed a little kit containing a test tube that you spit into and a postage paid envelope. And for “only” $399, you can post it back and they’ll check out your spit for any evidence of GRK3 mutations. So this is a test that will only work for Caucasians, and will give false negatives 97% of the time? False positives scare me even more – lets go convincing people they have a disease which they’ll insist on taking lots of horrible drugs with nasty side effects for. GSK and their ilk will love it.
Reading their What Can Psynomics Testing Not Tell Me? page, it seems to me that the test is even more useless – they’re basically trying to say “this test tells you virtually nothing”, but dressing it up so that the hysterical uneducated masses won’t figure that out, yet when they respond with a lawyer to complain that they’ve wasted four hundered dollars the company can respond with an “I told you it was bollocks, but did you listen to us, oh no…”. The inventor goes further:
“Kelsoe, 52, acknowledges that bipolar disorder probably results from a combination of genetic factors and life experiences, and that the presence of these gene variations does not at all mean that someone will, in fact, develop the disease. He admits, too, that his findings about the genetic basis of the illness are far from complete.” (mlive.com)
A lot of people are sceptical about this test, and in a far more eloquent and educated way than I. A critical review was published in Science, people seem to find it hard to replicate his results, and the blogosphere (how web 2.0!) is ablaze with commentary.
This whole thing appears to be about trying to cash in on the public’s fear of mental illness under a flimsy scientific pretext. It is dangerous to give people the idea that they need treatment for a mental illness, especially in a country where you can buy lithium on the internet. And it’s dangerous to give those people who are being treated a reason to say “actually, I don’t have this disease, I’m going off meds” and doing damage to themselves and those around them. As CL Psych says:
“The thing about bipolar disorder is that it can be diagnosed by (drum roll please)… interviewing a patient thoroughly! That’s right, a well-trained interviewer can simply ask questions to determine whether an individual has bipolar disorder. Imagine that.”
Yep, so the way to manage and treat bipolar disorder is by GPs picking it up, referral to a psychiatrist, and treatment (meds, CBT, whatever) under their care. Whether you can get that to an adequate standard or not is an issue with your local NHS trust (at least in this country) – an overpriced test that will tell you nothing is not the answer.
So in conclusion, this is in no way a solution to my original problem of needing a credit card that can work out what mood I’m in! I appreciate the effort Dr Kelsoe, but back to the drawing board please 
