No abstract

Predictive genetic testing (PGT) is offered to asymptomatic relatives at risk of hereditary heart disease, but the impact of result disclosure has been little studied. We evaluated the psychosocial impacts of PGT in hereditary heart disease, using self-report questionnaires (including the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) in 517 adults, administered three times to the prospective cohort (PCo: n = 264) and once to the retrospective cohort (RCo: n = 253). The main motivations for undergoing PGT were “to remove doubt” and “for their children”. The level of anxiety increased between pre-test and result appointments (p <0.0001), returned to baseline after the result (PCo), and was moderately elevated at 4.4 years (RCo). Subjects with a history of depression or with high baseline anxiety were more likely to develop anxiety after PGT result (p = 0.004 and p <0.0001, respectively), whatever it was. Unfavourable changes in professional and/or family life were observed in 12.4% (PCo) and 18.7% (RCo) of subjects. Few regrets about PGT were expressed (0.8% RCo, 2.3% PCo). Medical benefit was not the main motivation, which emphasises the role of pre/post-test counselling. When PGT was performed by expert teams, the negative impact was modest, but careful management is required in specific categories of subjects, whatever the genetic test result.

Purpose: Presymptomatic testing for susceptibility to genetic prion diseases is often delivered in difficult circumstances, as the index case is often dying when a genetic diagnosis is obtained. Since test requests in these diseases are very rare, the factors underlying decisions of relatives to be tested or not and the long-term psychological consequences are not reported. Methods: We contacted subjects who had consulted between 2004 and 2017 because a relative carried a pathological PRNP variant. Standardized psychological scales and semistructured interviews were proposed. Results: We did contact 19 of the 30 subjects who had consulted: 6 of 10 who did not undergo testing, 10 of 12 noncarriers, and 3 of 8 mutation carriers. Anxiety rates were high and similar between noncarriers and untested subjects. Conclusions: Living in a family with inherited prion disease produced psychological burden, regardless of the decision to undergo testing and its results. Decisions in favor of being testing did not allow relief of anxiety about the family disease. The dilemmatic decision not to know remained a burden to be coped with. Genetic counseling procedures should take into account all these situations, even that of noncarriers and that of untested.