ScienceDaily (July 16, 2009) — Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that disclosing genetic risk information to adult children of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) who request this information does not result in significant short-term psychological distress. The report from the REVEAL Study*, which appears in the July 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first randomized trial to disclose to participants whether or not they carried the ε4 variant of the APOE gene, a variant that has been found to increase the risk of developing AD.
The study demonstrated that test-related distress was reduced among those who learned that they were APOE ε4 negative, and was only transiently increased among those who learned they were APOE ε4 positive. The study also showed that persons with high levels of emotional distress before undergoing genetic testing were more likely to have emotional difficulties after disclosure.
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