Search This Blog

Monday, December 31, 2018

‘Stop Robocalling Me!’; ‘I Didn’t!’


Jeffrey Lewis Knapp saves the four to six telephone numbers his caller ID logs each day. At night he seeks his revenge, calling back the people he thinks are illegal robocallers. “How can I help you?” the Arizona-based retiree says he asks the people who answer.
The problem with Mr. Knapp’s approach: He sometimes calls people who didn’t, in fact, call him first. Instead, the individuals he calls are themselves victims of a phone-related crime called malicious number spoofing, in which callers falsify their number to disguise their identities.
“A lot of times they don’t know that their number was used,” said Mr. Knapp, 66. “I had one guy get a little irritated and hung up, but most are pretty positive.”
Americans’ growing battle against illegal robocallers has reached a boiling point, with victims of one form of phone-related malfeasance now lashing out at those impacted by a different form of it.
Hiya, one of many mobile phone applications with call-blocking features, estimates that there were 8 billion robocalls to U.S. cellphones in the final quarter of 2018, up from about 5 billion in the first quarter.

Many illegal robocalls use number spoofing to obscure their identities. The practice allows bad actors to display to recipients numbers that aren’t actually the ones they are calling from.
Meir Cohen, chief executive of TelTech Systems Inc., which sells an unwanted-call blocking app called RoboKiller, said phone numbers are often misused when robocallers deliberately generate numbers that appear to be in the same area code as the recipient. It is meant to lead victims to believe the call is legitimate and answer their phone.
Web-based calling technology makes it easy for robocallers to display a randomly generated number. The phone numbers spoofed, however, may belong to a real person or business that is unaware that the number is being used that way.
There is no fail-safe way for consumers to keep their numbers from being spoofed and even changing numbers won’t guarantee that the problem will go away, robocall prevention specialists say.
The Federal Communications Commission has said that combating illegal robocalls and malicious phone-number spoofing is its top consumer protection priority and that consumers and businesses impacted by the problem can file a complaint with the agency or record a voice-mail message that says they don’t make marketing calls.
But clamping down on spoofing is difficult.
“A lot of spoofing can happen overseas and when it happens from overseas it can be very difficult to trace the origins of a call,” said Christine Reilly, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, who works with companies on compliance with consumer protection laws.
There are also legitimate uses of spoofing, which makes an outright ban on such technology problematic.
A doctor who wants to call patients back from her cellphone may want to spoof her office number to avoid giving out personal contact information. A domestic violence shelter, where privacy is paramount, may similarly wish to disguise its number when it calls the home of a client.
The FCC has so far handed hefty penalties to bad actors and allowed carriers to block calls from fake area codes as well as numbers that aren’t used for outbound calls.
The agency in September proposed a $37.5 million fine against a Tucson-based company for maliciously spoofing numbers in millions of telemarketing calls over a period of 14 months starting in 2016. In that case, at least one person in Arizona received more than five calls a day from people complaining that she had called them when in fact the company had used her number.
The telecommunications industry, meanwhile, is working on a call-certifying protocol (known as STIR) as well as guidelines for implementing it (known as SHAKEN) in the coming years. Under that system, carriers on the originating end of a phone call would check to make sure that the caller has the right to use a given number while the carrier on the receiving end would certify that nothing had changed as the call was routed and received.
Consumers will eventually see an indicator on their phone signaling whether a call has been verified. If a bad actor spoofed a number, that verification would not occur.
Efforts to stop phone-number abuse such as spoofing have had a limited impact so far, with some victims of angry calls fearful for their safety or finding themselves taking heat from strangers.
Angela Santiago changed her phone number of 20 years after receiving an angry call from a woman accusing her of robocalling. After doing so, however, the same thing happened with her new number.
“It’s a violation and a huge inconvenience,” Ms. Santiago said.
Posted by at No comments:

Digital wellness, brought to you by Big Tech


IN EARLY FEBRUARY, the technologist Tristan Harris stood in front of a crowd at a tech conference and held up his iPhonelike Martin Luther presenting his Ninety-five Theses. He was there to warn of the plain and common dangers of our phones, which he has compared to slot machines and to cults, while announcing a coalition called the Center for Humane Technology to liberate us.
Harris had begun this crusade several years prior, as a Google employee who noticed how tech companies designed products to keep us locked on our devices for their own profit. This represented, to him, a crisis in attention. Now, Harris was hoping to wake the rest of us up—and maybe even convince our tech overlords to do something about it. He even gave his radical movement a name: Time Well Spent.
Nearly a year later, Harris’s cause no longer seems fringe. It’s downright mainstream. Apple wants to free you from the sticky trap of your iPhone. Google wants you to feel JOMO, the “joy of missing out” from your screen. Even Facebook has its own suite of tools to help you manage your screen time, and Mark Zuckerberg called “time well spent” his personal goal for the year, cribbing the language directly from Harris’s movement. The consensus in Silicon Valley is that you should spend less time on your phone.
But don’t be deceived. While it looks like the revolution is won, this is just the beginning of a war to colonize your phone screen. Google, Apple, and Facebook seem like they’ve handed over the keys to unshackle us from our attention-splintering devices, but in doing so, they’ve accomplished something more significant. Tech companies have co-opted the movement, turning “digital wellness” into a Goopified trend that functions as marketing.
“It has been a big year for the movement, but it has also illustrated how much work lies ahead,” says Fred Stutzman, the CEO of Freedom, which helps people manage their time on-screen by blocking apps and websites. “We’re at this uncomfortable stage of digital well-being as marketing, where the tools created by corporations seem like a way to improve their brand image and atone for their past sins.”
The low-hanging fruit of humane technology—turning off notifications, minimizing the number of times your screen lights up and asks you to pay attention to it—has been picked up by Google and Apple. On both iOS and Android, it’s now easier to keep track of how many hours you spend on certain apps, and even set app time limits. But neither company has done much to address the persuasive design of those apps, or help people move beyond what was already possible to do by manually changing a few settings in your phone.
In other words, Google and Apple used the banner of “digital wellness” to re-package tools that already existed, without changing much of anything about your phone.
“Time Well Spent was never about giving users features to set time limits on their phones, it was about changing the game from which companies compete,” says Harris. “The problem is that everyone misunderstood what ‘time well spent’ was about by anchoring on the word ‘time.’ As if lost time was the biggest harm coming from technology. The original TED talk makes clear that the root problem is the race-to-the-bottom of the brain stem to manipulate human nature—hijack our minds—because of the business model to capture people’s time.”
In January, Zuckerberg wrote that his “personal challenge”for the year was to make sure “that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.” It was meant to assuage Facebook’s investors, after a quarter that saw a drop in the amount of time users were spending on the platform. Later in the year, Facebook and Instagram each rolled out their own time-management tools, which include a bar graph that shows how much time you spend on the app and an option to mute push notifications for up to eight hours.
Nothing else has changed. You can now track how much time you spend on Facebook, but you still have to dodge the constant notifications (“11 friends are interested in events happening tomorrow”) and thousands of features designed to keep you scrolling. Instagram is still a FOMO factory, which added features this year like an “online now” indicator and a platform for longform video. It’s hard to see how any of this was designed with “time well spent” in mind, rather than the intent to keep you opening the app and keeping it open longer.
“We need to move away from just human-centered design to human-protection design,” Aza Raskin, a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, wrote in a tweet earlier this year. “From: Have a problem? It’s your responsibility to use it differently. To: It’s our responsibility to design technology in a way that protects people.” (Razkin could not be reached for this story; he is currently practicing “time well spent” by studying forest elephant communication in the Central African Republic.)
If anything, Big Tech’s buy-in has validated the difficulty people feel in putting their phones down. Alanna Harvey, the co-founder and CMO of Flipd, an app that nudges users to spend less time on their phones, called 2018 “a turning point.” But other app developers say the year has been damaging for start-ups in the space. Andrew Dunn, who makes a minimalist and distraction-free Android launcher called Siempo, says fundraising has become more challenging this year because “a perception exists that Apple and Google will fully serve consumer needs.”
Both Dunn and Stutzman think the native tools recently added to iOS and Android are overly simplistic. They also point out that neither Apple nor Google has created APIs for their screen time products, which means third-party developers can’t build on them. And worse, some in the industry believe the big companies are actively pushing developers out of the space. Last month, a group of “digital wellness” apps were abruptly removed from the App Store, a move that some took as Apple way of forcing people to only use internal iOS tools.
“If ‘time well spent’ products are purely the domain of the large Silicon Valley players, any control we gain over tech will be illusory, and we’d do a great disservice to all the people who could benefit from these tools,” Stutzman says.
That’s not to discount the gains of the movement this year. In name-checking “digital wellness,” Apple, Google, and the like brought a grassroots campaign to the forefront of conversation and made it possible for more people to understand the magnitude of the tech addiction problem. But don’t be fooled. Your phone is still a battleground for your attention, and Big Tech is still finding new ways to capture yours.
Posted by at No comments:

Rampant migrant illnesses force U.S. Border Patrol to change procedures


Hundreds of migrants and their children seeking to enter the U.S. from Mexico are arriving with illnesses, forcing U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seek additional medical assistance and boost medical screenings, the agency disclosed Monday.
Between Dec. 22 and Sunday, the agency reported 451 cases referred to doctors or other providers, including 259 children. Among the children, half of the cases involved kids under the age of 5.
The ill migrants have been arriving with all kinds of ailments, many with flu or pneumonia that can be particularly pervasive and dangerous this time of year. Seventeen migrants have been hospitalized, including six children, according to the agency..
“The U.S. Border Patrol is doing everything in its power to handle this crisis,” said Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan in a statement. But he added, “The status quo is not acceptable” given the wave of immigrants arriving.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement last week that the Border Patrol has detailed 139,817 migrants on the Southwest border in the past two months. That compares to 74,946 for the same period last year. These include 68,510 family members and 13,981 unaccompanied children.
Making matters worse, McAleenan said central American refugees are now arriving directly by bus, not just by foot, and that a “robust smuggling cycle continues.”
Disclosure of the numbers of sick migrants come amid heightened concern about the medical condition of children in U.S. custody. Previously, the agency disclosed an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in custody on Christmas Eve, the second immigrant child to pass away in detention this month.
The boy, Felipe Gomez Alonzo, had been treated and released for cold and fever symptoms during nearly a week in U.S. custody, the agency said.
The Border Patrol has been receiving assistance from the Coast Guard, which has sent medical teams to the border in the Yuma and Tucson, Arizona, and Rio Grande Valley sectors of the border. The Public Health Service also said it will deploy teams to help.
The Border Patrol is also changing procedures to enhance medical evaluations of children. Parents are being interviewed about their children’s medical condition and history and kids’ blood pressure, pulse and temperature are among the vitals being checked by assessment teams, McAleenan told reporters in a conference call.
“We have always had an agent review the condition of the children,” McAleenan said. “What we are providing now is a medical professional” for the evaluations.
He said he said the cases being referred involve illnesses believe to have been contracted in transit to the U.S., not while in U.S. custody. “Many were ill before they departed their homes,” he said.
Posted by at No comments:

2018’s Must-Have Medical Apps for Primary Care Docs


Earlier this year, we put together a list of what we thought were the best medical apps for healthcare providers. Now at the end of 2018, we’re augmenting that list to give you a full picture of what we think are the must-have medical apps for those in primary care.
Quick reference for common obstetric emergencies
Many of us in family medicine practice full-scope — including obstetrics and urgent/emergent care. Routine vaginal deliveries can quickly deteriorate into one of many frightening obstetrical emergencies. Recent information from the CDCshows a sobering statistic that maternal mortality in the U.S. is increasing rather than decreasing. The number of reported pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. steadily increased from 7.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 18.0 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2014. The three most common causes of maternal mortality worldwide and in the U.S. have not changed: postpartum hemorrhage, venous thromboembolism, and severe hypertension of pregnancy. The Safe Motherhood Initiative (SMI) is an initiative of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) District II in New York State. This group links hospitals across the state together and provides healthcare bundles and education aimed at reducing mortality from these three most common lethal pregnancy complications.
ACOG DII SMI is a combination of expert opinion, ACOG position statements, and algorithms supported by evidence-based medicine, clinical practice guidelines, and standard of care medical practice. The app contains easy to follow checklists, algorithms, and teaching slides targeted to the three most common causes of maternal mortality.
Screening and assessment of mental health conditions
Mental health conditions are exceedingly common and costly in the U.S. medical system. Recent statistics from the CDCestimated that they account for 60 million visits to primary care and 6 million ER visits annually. Depression alone accounts for more than 10% of all primary care visits. These conditions result in a sobering 44,000 suicide deaths per year in the U.S.
Screening for these conditions is commonly performed in most primary care practices with supporting recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) for conditions such as depression, alcohol abuse, etc.
Psych on Demand is an app by a board-certified psychiatrist that puts all of the most common (and some uncommon) screening instruments in one user-friendly app. The app contains more than 35 instruments covering disorders including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, bipolar disorder, and many others.
It’s an exceptional value for all who screen and treat mental health disorders.
The wait is over!
Type 2 diabetes remains a global epidemic. According to a 2017 CDC report, over 100 million Americans have prediabetes or diabetes. Diabetes was the number seven leading cause of death in 2015. The World Health Organization (WHO) published a report showing a quadrupling of the prevalence of diabetes since 1980 worldwide. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 with diabetes do not know they have the disease. Diabetes creates a significant burden on morbidity and mortality and per the ADA, came at a cost of $327 billion in 2017 in the U.S. alone. The ADA app had not been updated since the release of the 2014 standards. In June, the app was updated to the 2018 ADA Standards of Care and completely redesigned — finally. The latest version of the app includes detailed information on diagnosing and treating diabetes, lifestyle and nutrition recommendations, and specific guidelines from lipid management to retinopathy treatment.
ADA Standards of Care is well-referenced and provides content any medical student or seasoned attending could benefit from having available at the tips of their fingers. The app contains hyperlinks to references, comprehensive PDFs, and links to online ADA articles.
Teaches the Epley maneuver for vertigo on your smart device
“I’m dizzy, doctor!” Those were the words of a patient I saw in clinic recently. Upon further questioning, it was clear this patient had vertigo. The question was what type? Luckily, a good patient history and physical exam can both make a solid diagnosis and in some cases, treat the patient. Primary care providers must know how to properly perform the Dix-Hallpike maneuver to help make a diagnosis of vertigo, especially the most common form, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). Luckily, the vast majority of vertigo cases seen in primary care are due to BPPV, and this very disturbing condition (for the patient) can be effectively treated in nearly 90% of the cases by proper performance of the Epley maneuver.
An enterprising ENT physician and inventor in Canada created a unique solution to BPPV. He created an app called DizzyFix for providers to teach proper diagnosis and treatment of BPPV using the Dix-Hallpike and Epley maneuvers, and the DizzyFix device that patients can place on any “ball cap” to guide them through the Epley Maneuver at home.
Ensures your patients receive the correct pneumococcal vaccines at the right time in the right sequence
One of the most common tasks during clinic is to ensure my patients are up to date on their vaccinations. In 2015, the CDC/FDA/Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) introduced the new pneumococcal conjugate 13 valent vaccine (PCV13) for use in adults in addition to the pneumococcal polysaccharide 23 valent vaccine (PPSV23). For many of our clinic’s nursing staff, residents, and faculty, the transition caused some confusion. The guidelines have been revised slightly since then with the most current pneumococcal vaccine guidelines published in November 2018. Despite updates to existing “shots” apps such as Shots by STFM, CDV Vaccines, and ACP Immunization Advisor, the process can still be challenging to explain to patients and ensure immunizations are given at the right time and in the proper sequence.
Recently, the CDC entered the pneumococcal vaccines fray with their own app to help providers — CDC PneumoRecs. This app covers both infant/child as well as adult pneumococcal vaccines. The app uses a patient’s date of birth (DOB) to calculate which vaccines the patient requires, when, and in what sequence based on age and risk factors.
Posted by at No comments:

Low-Risk Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Highly Anticipated for 2019


Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) expansion into a low-risk population is on the table in 2019, as two pivotal trials and regulatory review for this indication are widely anticipated.
PARTNER 3 and CoreValve Low Risk will have short-term results available in low-risk patients who got the Sapien 3 valve from Edwards Lifesciences and the Evolut R from Medtronic, respectively, for severe aortic stenosis. Patients have been selected such that no one will have surgical mortality risk exceed 2% in PARTNER 3 and 3% in CoreValve.
Both studies are on track to be presented in March at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting. If the results are positive for both, the FDA is highly likely to grant commercial approval for a low-risk indication in the latter half of 2019, speculated George Deeb, MD, who is a part of the CoreValve Low Risk trial’s steering and screening committees.
“If the low-risk trials show that TAVR is non-inferior to SAVR [surgical aortic valve replacement], then the future will have TAVR dominating this arena,” said Deeb, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
At his institution, clinicians take a multidisciplinary heart team approach in presenting all the appropriate options to the patient and taking into consideration the patient’s preference to come to a shared decision for treatment, he said.
Still, “the majority of patients who have three-leaflet aortic stenosis that are moderate-to-greater risk, they’re going to choose TAVR. The majority of our valves are TAVR. Once low-risk is approved, the majority of patients will request TAVR,” Deeb predicted.
Exceptions, he noted, will be the younger patients who want a surgical mechanical valve that will last longer between interventions.
The question of durability has been an Achilles heel of TAVR. While European data seem to suggest similar longevity between transcatheter and surgical tissue valves out to 5 to 7 years, it’s not clear if that is good enough to get TAVR into younger patients.
“Durability getting into younger patients will still be a big question mark. It’s not right to assume it will be as good as the bioprosthetic surgical valves,” said Richard Shemin, MD, chief of cardiac surgery at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a site investigator for PARTNER 3.
Certain mechanical properties of TAVR valves may make them more prone to tissue deterioration, he suggested in an interview. For one, the tissue is crimped thinner than the tissue in surgical valves, and it is also placed on a wire stent instead of mounted on a frame.
“The trials will answer many questions and pose many questions. These patients are low-risk for surgery, but in general, usually these low-risk trials do not necessarily have young patients,” Shemin said.
He stressed good clinical judgment even if the indication for TAVR in low-risk patients is approved by the FDA as many expect in 2019.
Expansion of the Sapien line has run into a bit of a snag, in the meantime. The next-generation Sapien 3 Ultra was cleared by European regulators for treating severe, symptomatic aortic stenosis this year but had a wrench thrown into its debut in Europe because of a patent dispute between Edwards Lifesciences and Boston Scientific. The Ultra did get FDA approval, which had been expected by the end of 2018.
Beyond device evolution and expansion into low-risk patients, companies are also trying to make TAVR a treatment for patients before symptoms start. The EARLY TAVR trial, for example, is investigating how this approach compares to clinical surveillance in asymptomatic individuals with severe aortic stenosis.
“Whatever’s good for patients is good for the cardiac surgeon and the interventionalist,” according to Shemin. “There’s often extreme enthusiasm if a trial was good to maybe extend [the treatment] to a patient population that was never tested. I think like everything else, people have focused on the big picture, but the devil’s in the details,” he emphasized.
Posted by at No comments:

Artificial fingerprints could hack into a third of smartphones


  • Researchers at New York University and the Michigan State University have developed images of fingerprints that have the potential to unlock devices.
  • They told CNBC their findings suggested such an attack could be profitable for hackers.
  • The way devices store images of fingerprints could be made more secure, the researchers said.
Artificial fingerprints have been developed by researchers who say they could one day be used to hack into everyday devices.
Researchers from New York University and Michigan State University successfully generated what they call “DeepMasterPrints” earlier this year. These are machine-learning methods that act as a kind of “masterkey” which, the researchers claim, have the potential to unlock around one in three fingerprint-protected smartphones.
In the paper released in October, the authors said synthetic fingerprints could be “used by an adversary to launch an attack … that can compromise the security of a fingerprint-based recognition system.”
Philip Bontrager, Aditi Roy, Julian Togelius, Nasir Memon and Arun Ross, the researchers behind the study, said the way fingerprints were recognized on smartphones and other devices was often problematic.
“Phones and many more devices don’t capture your entire fingerprint,” they told CNBC over the phone. “There’s not enough space on the device, so they capture a partial fingerprint — which is not as secure as the full image. (People assume) the device stitches images of their fingerprint together, but that’s not really what happens — it keeps sets of partial fingerprints.”
For each finger stored in place of a password, the device keeps multiple images. If someone then uses their finger to unlock that device, they only need to match one of the partial fingerprint images on its security system.
“If you store images for three of your fingers the device may keep around 30 partial fingerprints,” the researchers said. “With MasterPrints you just have to create a few — five or ten and I’m in business.”
They added that this could unlock a “reasonably large” number of phones — just under a third.
“If every fifth phone works it would be a profitable scam,” they said.

Defenses increasing

While the researchers told CNBC that their findings could be a potential threat to security systems, there were things software developers could do to make such an attack harder to pull off.
“Research in assessing vulnerabilities in a fingerprint recognition system is a constant arms race between fixing vulnerabilities and discovering new ones,” the paper said. “It is important for researchers to probe for new vulnerabilities so that loopholes can be fixed.”
Many developers were already making fingerprint scanners more secure by moving sensors from devices’ buttons to screens, allowing them to pick up higher resolution images.
“Some smartphones have the sensors on the side buttons, which are very thin — they’re convenient but less secure,” the researchers told CNBC. “Their sensors only register a quarter or so of the fingerprint’s features.”

What’s at stake?

Most smartphones give users the option to set up fingerprint recognition as a way to access their device, as well as a way to verify payments and unlock bank accounts. Amazon’s U.K. site offers more than 2,000 products relating to fingerprint security, including padlocks and safes.
In July, it emerged that Mastercard was in talks with British banks about introducing cards with integrated fingerprint scanners, opening the market up to biometric payment systems.
Big firms are also using biometrics to provide smoother experiences for customers. Delta already allows its passengers to use their fingerprints to board flights and access airport lounges, and car rental firm Hertz recently unveiled a biometric system at Atlanta International Airport to make renting a car up to 75 percent faster.
Clear, the firm behind Delta and Hertz‘s fingerprint recognition technology, told CNBC via email that as long as companies provided the appropriate security, there was “no question” that biometrics were more secure than a traditional ID.
Clear “does not rent, sell or share member data. The platform is also Safety Act Certified by the Department of Homeland Security as a Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology,” a spokesperson told CNBC via email this week.
“We go to great lengths to secure member data, protect privacy, and enable exceptional experiences. We operate a closed network that is not exposed to the internet, and our members’ biometrics are encrypted at all times, in transit and at rest.”
Spokespersons for smartphone makers Apple and Google were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. Mastercard and Samsung declined to comment on the research.
Posted by at No comments:

Is the future of dog health in a DNA test?


Information from commercial DNA tests helped reveal the genetic origins of the husky’s captivating blue eyes and may even help us treat some diseases. But not everyone agrees.
Have you ever been captivated by the bright blue eyes of a husky puppy? Well, now scientists have discovered the genetic inner workings behind the blue eyes of Siberian huskies.
The new study found that a duplication in a stretch of DNA on the dog chromosome 18 was associated with the husky’s icy stare. This stretch of DNA is close to a gene called ALX4, involved with eye development in humans. This is a good indication the region is involved in the same function for .
The study was led by American company Embark, which makes DNA tests for dogs. These tests aim to uncover potentially preventable diseases in our furry friends. They’re also used to confirm the breed or breed mix of your dog or just about any other trait of the animal.
The dog DNA collected can also contribute to valuable scientific research, as this study shows. But some veterinarians say it’s too early to hang all our hopes on DNA testing.
Old dog, new tricks
Discovering the secrets behind huskies’ beautiful blues was made possible by analysing the genome of 3248 dogs and using an innovative approach to collect information. The company reached out to their customers for information about their dogs, even asking for photos of their dog’s eye colour. With this information at hand, the team was able to focus on analysing the genome of blue-eyed dogs.
The approach was not only new but also pretty clever, as it allowed researchers to analyse a large dataset without having to spend any time or money collecting samples.
“It’s a new way of doing dog . Instead of an academic researcher like me needing to ask the federal government for money in order to sponsor a study on one particular thing,  pay for the genetic testing up front, and then the  can be quickly put to use by researchers investigating a whole host of different studies,” says Adam Boyko, a co-author of the study and co-founder of Embark. Now that the research is published, the data will be available for anyone wishing to use it for other studies.
This study represents the first example of how consumer-based genetic tests can be used on animals to do basic research and get some answers.
Credit: Embark
Sick as a dog?
Embark is one of several companies offering genetic tests for dogs. Other companies are also offering similar tests for cats. Overall, a lot of people are excited about testing their beloved pet’s DNA. But many scientists have expressed doubts and concerns about what we can actually learn about our dog’s health with these tests.
While these  may reveal that your dog has a genetic mutation that is linked to a , this does not necessarily mean that your dog will go on to develop the disease. Some experts actually argue that these genomic pet tests are selling false hope.
“We simply don’t have any of the necessary follow-up data … to predict whether an individual dog with a genetic variant associated with a disease will actually go on to get sick,” says Lisa Moses, a veterinarian at the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston.
But cases of people using these tests to make medical decisions for their pets are already cropping up. One example was a 13-year-old dog that was “put to sleep” following a genetic test. The dog started having trouble walking and controlling its bladder and bowel movement. Her owners bought a genetic test and found that the dog carried a mutation linked to a neurological disorder. Based on this test (and, likely, the problems troubling the poor dog), the owners decided to euthanise the dog. But only a small percentage of dogs that test positive for that common mutation end up developing a disease, said the authors of the Nature comment article, and there are other treatable conditions that could also explain the symptoms the dog was suffering.
“Most worrisome is that people are using some of the DNA tests as a confirmation that a dog has a certain disease if they have signs that could be caused by that disease. The tests are not appropriate to confirm disease without other pieces of evidence, since a genetic variant is not the same as a disease state,” says Lisa.
But there are some good examples too of the benefits of dog genetic testing. “I remember one case where an adult mixed-breed dog was genetically at risk for a disorder known as exercise-induced collapse, and it explained the spells he would have when he would exercise in the summer,” Adam says.
In another example, dog owners who were having trouble training their dogs had them tested. They discovered that the dogs were not of the breeds they originally thought. “By understanding the breed make-up, they could better give their dog the environment and training their dog needed,” Adam says.
To test or not to test
The main take-home message is that a genetic test is not the final word—having a mutation linked to a disease is not the same as having the disease.
“A genetic test is not a substitute for a veterinarian, a test alone won’t diagnose the presence of a disease! I do think most owners realise this, but clearly more education is needed if some people are using genetic testing inappropriately,” says Adam.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)