This week Corrine Voils, PhD, and colleagues in health services research saw their paper appear online in the upcoming November issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine plus an associated editorial.
The authors learned that adding genetic risk to type 2 diabetes risk counseling did not change weight, insulin resistance, or health behaviors.
Corrine I. Voils CI, Coffman CJ, Grubber JM, Edelman D, Sadeghpour A, Maciejewski ML, Bolton J, Cho A, Ginsburg GS, and Yancey WS. "Does Type 2 Diabetes Genetic Testing and Counseling Reduce Modifiable Risk Factors? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Veterans." J Gen Intern Med 30, no. 11 (November 2015): 1591-1598. First online April 16, 2015. PMID 25876740 [Link]
The editorial by Alka M. Kanaya, MD, appears here: J Gen Intern Med 30(11):1570–1 DOI: 10.1007/s11606-015-3409-0. Dr. Kanaya broadens the discussion by speculating why the negative results happened and whether the future might include the combination of genetic and epigenetic measures. If conveying risk is not changing behavior then personalizing further may be the answer.
We applaud our investigators for their contribution to this important area of research about diabetes and risk counseling.