While personalized medicine is hailed for its ability to identify potential health concerns and tailor treatment to them, a new study in the British Medical Journal suggests knowing about these risk is not enough to incite risk-reducing behavior.
Researchers analyzed 18 studies where participants learned their risk of diseases that could be lowered by behavioral changes, such as smoking cessation, diet, alcohol use and physical activity.
They found communicating this DNA-based risk to participants was not effective in changing individuals' health-related behavior.
"Existing evidence does not support expectations that such interventions could play a major role in motivating behavior change to improve population health," the researchers concluded.
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