What is Genetic Risk?

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Genetic risk is the probability of a person developing a particular health condition which tells you how susceptible you are (genetically) to that condition.

How is this quantified?

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Genetic risk for a condition can be evaluated and quantified using certain statistical entities like odds ratio (OR), relative risk (RR), absolute risk (AR) etc, which are calculated based on the status of SNPs (whether present or absent) in a particular individual and the genetic risk contributed by one or more of these SNPs towards the condition.

Xcode’s genetic assessments use Relative Risk to quantify genetic risk.

What is Relative Risk?

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Relative risk (RR) is the probability of a person carrying the SNP developing the health condition when compared to a person without the SNP developing the same health condition.

Relative risk values are typically derived from odds ratio, which is the probability value that indicates the association between specific SNPs and the health condition and this is obtained from case-control studies.

These values are interpreted for the entire population and given for an individual as relative risk.

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Understanding your risk score

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For example, a person has a relative risk of 2.0 for Diabetes, which implies that the person has two times the risk for developing Diabetes when compared to a normal person (who will be given a relative risk value of 1.0).

Relative risk values below 1 indicate that the person has a reduced risk for that condition.

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Typical risk: 0.90 to 1.30

Reduced risk: <0.90

Elevated risk: >1.30

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