Me:decoded
I recently had my DNA tested by deCODEme.com.
My wife thought I was crazy. The idea was to find out what diseases I was more or less susceptible to, and then use
that information, along with more conventional tests, and consultation with my doctor, to create a personalised medicine
preventative plan for myself.
Think of it in the same way you would regular car servicing. The servicing details depend on the Brand and model of car,
together with how many kms done and whether you did it off road or on road.
Anyway, I have learnt much of interest, some of which I am disclosing on this blog entry.
Ancestry
As you can see from the chart my closest correlation is to the French group, followed by the Orcadian group.
This makes sense: my father’s family was originally Flemish and my mother’s family Scots. From the spelling
of my mother’s name it was likely that we were from the offshore islands. I guess Orcadian is a reference
to the Orkney islands, off the north east coast of Scotland.
Mitochondrial & Y DNA
I am a Mitogroup J. The exciting thing about this is that we are long livers, according to a recent study in Nature.
See http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v9/n9/abs/5200703a.html
My Y-Group is also J, but it means something different.
Quoting from deCODEme, “Today, the greatest concentration of Y-group J members is found in the Near East, North Africa, and Ethiopia, where up to 30 percent of males belong to this Y-group. The frequency of Y-group J members in Europe is much lower, or close to 3 percent. Members of Y-group J are relatively common among Jewish populations, where about 25 percent belong to this Y-group.”
Apparently there are clubs for these groups.
Compared With
One neat thing you can do is compare yourself with people on the record or friends. (Think facebook friends with DNA!).
I do not have any friends yet, but I have compared myself with James Watson and Craig Venter. I am extremely unrelated to James Watson.
For Craig Venter I have low to medium sharing with some very high sharing on the X chromosome. Welcome, distant relative.
Susceptibilities
I was rather pleased with my disease susceptibilities. I already knew I had Factor V Leiden Heterozygous, which I have inherited from my mother.
I am at higher risk than 99.8% of the population for DVTs and the like. Because I already knew this, when I was specifically tested for it ten years ago,
I have avoided drinking alcohol or sleeping on flights for the past ten years.
One thing I was very happy about, given the heart disease on my father’s side (but not my mother’s side) is that I Have .87% the risk
of the average European male. Given that I am a non-smoker, and do not have Male Metabolic Syndrome, or high blood pressure, I am feeling pretty good about this one.
For the most part I am pretty happy with what I have found. And for those few things I am at elevated risk of, I can focus more on preventative testing
and lifestyle adjustment. Of course, having an elevated risk needs to be turned into a lifetime risk first. deCODEme do this too.
Improvements
Something I would like to see in future is the ability to add your own environmental factors such as smoking, BMI, age etc to get more accurate lifetime risks.
And of course, more people to compare with and more disease susceptibilities.
All considered, I am happy I did this.
