Understanding risk

deCODE offers DNA-based tests for assessing individual risk of a number of common diseases, as well as scans for major cardiovascular diseases and common cancers. Ordered by your physician, these reference laboratory tests can empower more personalized and effective screening, early detection, treatment and prevention strategies for these conditions.

The common diseases – such as heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes and the most common forms of cancer – arise as a result of the confluence of both genetic and environmental and lifestyle risk factors. We all have a baseline genetic susceptibility to these conditions, a susceptibility that is in dynamic interaction with our environment and lifestyle. While a great deal has been known about environmental and lifestyle risk factors, it is only recently that we have begun to discover the variations in the sequence of the human genome that confer risk of the most common conditions.

Empowering prevention

As the world leader in the discovery of genetic risk factors for common diseases, deCODE uses its findings as the basis of tests to measure individual risk of a growing range of diseases. Because the risk detected by our tests is generally independent of that conferred by conventional risk factors doctors already use, the results provide a more comprehensive picture of your likelihood of developing a given disease. Importantly, this means that conventional preventive measures will work to decrease your overall risk, allowing you and your physician to work together to address environmental and lifestyle risk factors and to optimize screening for earlier intervention and prevention.

It is important to emphasize that our tests detect risk; they do not diagnose the presence of a disease, nor to they detect the rare, so-called Mendelian genetic variants that directly and certainly cause a disease. Rather, the results of our tests are probabilistic, in much the same way as your LDL cholesterol level affects your likelihood of having a heart attack but does not definitively determine whether you will.

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Ordering tests and using the results

The tests offered through deCODEhealth are reference-laboratory tests that must be ordered by a physician and are reimbursable under many healthcare plans. Talk to your doctor about ordering these tests, or contact deCODE’s customer service representatives to learn more.

The goal of our tests is to provide risk information that is medically actionable and easy to use. In case your doctor does not have a test kit available in his office he or she can have it sent directly to your house. All you have to do is swab the inside of your cheek with the provided DNA collector and mail it to us in a pre-addressed envelope. The results are made electronically available to your doctor’s private web-based account, allowing him or her to share the results with you in person or online.

The exact price of tests depends upon the physician, lab or distributor they are ordered through. Because deCODE runs your sample using a custom-designed chip, once you have ordered one test or scan you can usually order additional tests without having to send in a new sample. (Those who have ordered deCODEhealth complete scans will have to submit a new sample for any additional tests.) Our pricing structure provides significant discounts the more tests are ordered. You and your ordering physician should examine the different pricing structures to figure out whether multiple tests or a scan might be best for you.