scholarly journals Clinical challenges in interpreting multiple pathogenic mutations in single patients

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christa Slaught ◽  
Elizabeth G. Berry ◽  
Lindsay Bacik ◽  
Alison H. Skalet ◽  
George Anadiotis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Cancer Predisposition ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Patient Specific ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Pathogenic Mutations ◽  
Therapeutic Decisions ◽  
Gene Panel Testing

Abstract Background In the past two decades, genetic testing for cancer risk assessment has entered mainstream clinical practice due to the availability of low-cost panels of multiple cancer-associated genes. However, the clinical value of multiple-gene panels for cancer susceptibility is not well established, especially in cases where panel testing identifies more than one pathogenic variant. The risk for specific malignancies as a result of a mutated gene is complex and likely influenced by superimposed modifier variants and/or environmental effects. Recent data suggests that the combination of multiple pathogenic variants may be fewer than reported by chance, suggesting that some mutation combinations may be detrimental. Management of patients with “incidentally” discovered mutations can be particularly challenging, especially when established guidelines call for radical procedures (e.g. total gastrectomy in CDH1) in patients and families without a classic clinical history concerning for that cancer predisposition syndrome. Case presentation We present two cases, one of an individual and one of a family, with multiple pathogenic mutations detected by multi-gene panel testing to highlight challenges practitioners face in counseling patients about pathogenic variants and determining preventive and therapeutic interventions. Conclusions Ongoing investigation is needed to improve our understanding of inherited susceptibility to disease in general and cancer predisposition syndromes, as this information has the potential to lead to the development of more precise and patient-specific counseling and surveillance strategies. The real-world adoption of new or improved technologies into clinical practice frequently requires medical decision-making in the absence of established understanding of gene-gene interactions. In the meantime, practitioners must be prepared to apply a rationale based on currently available knowledge to clinical decision-making. Current practice is evolving to rely heavily on clinical concordance with personal and family history in making specific therapeutic decisions.

Cardiovascular genetics: the role of genetic testing in diagnosis and management of patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Heart ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. heartjnl-2020-316798
Author(s):  
Monica Ahluwalia ◽  
Carolyn Y Ho
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy ◽  
Clinical Manifestations ◽  
Left Ventricular ◽  
Family Management ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Gene Panel Testing

Genetic testing in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a valuable tool to manage patients and their families. Genetic testing can help inform diagnosis and differentiate HCM from other disorders that also result in increased left ventricular wall thickness, thereby directly impacting treatment. Moreover, genetic testing can definitively identify at-risk relatives and focus family management. Pathogenic variants in sarcomere and sarcomere-related genes have been implicated in causing HCM, and targeted gene panel testing is recommended for patients once a clinical diagnosis has been established. If a pathogenic or likely pathogenic variant is identified in a patient with HCM, predictive genetic testing is recommended for their at-risk relatives to determine who is at risk and to guide longitudinal screening and risk stratification. However, there are important challenges and considerations to implementing genetic testing in clinical practice. Genetic testing results can have psychological and other implications for patients and their families, emphasising the importance of genetic counselling before and after genetic testing. Determining the clinical relevance of genetic testing results is also complex and requires expertise in understanding of human genetic variation and clinical manifestations of the disease. In this review, we discuss the genetics of HCM and how to integrate genetic testing in clinical practice.

scholarly journals Population-based estimates of breast cancer risk for carriers of pathogenic variants identified by gene-panel testing

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa C. Southey ◽  
James G. Dowty ◽  
Moeen Riaz ◽  
Jason A. Steen ◽  
Anne-Laure Renault ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Breast Cancer Risk ◽  
Cancer Risk ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Cancer Predisposition ◽  
Gene Panel ◽  
Breast Cancer Predisposition ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Gene Panel Testing

AbstractPopulation-based estimates of breast cancer risk for carriers of pathogenic variants identified by gene-panel testing are urgently required. Most prior research has been based on women selected for high-risk features and more data is needed to make inference about breast cancer risk for women unselected for family history, an important consideration of population screening. We tested 1464 women diagnosed with breast cancer and 862 age-matched controls participating in the Australian Breast Cancer Family Study (ABCFS), and 6549 healthy, older Australian women enroled in the ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) study for rare germline variants using a 24-gene-panel. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated using unconditional logistic regression adjusted for age and other potential confounders. We identified pathogenic variants in 11.1% of the ABCFS cases, 3.7% of the ABCFS controls and 2.2% of the ASPREE (control) participants. The estimated breast cancer OR [95% confidence interval] was 5.3 [2.1–16.2] for BRCA1, 4.0 [1.9–9.1] for BRCA2, 3.4 [1.4–8.4] for ATM and 4.3 [1.0–17.0] for PALB2. Our findings provide a population-based perspective to gene-panel testing for breast cancer predisposition and opportunities to improve predictors for identifying women who carry pathogenic variants in breast cancer predisposition genes.

scholarly journals Extended gene panel testing in lobular breast cancer

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke M. van Veen ◽  
D. Gareth Evans ◽  
Elaine F. Harkness ◽  
Helen J. Byers ◽  
Jamie M. Ellingford ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Detection Rate ◽  
Gene Panel ◽  
Lobular Breast Cancer ◽  
Germline Variants ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Gene Panel Testing ◽  
Increased Risk

AbstractPurpose: Lobular breast cancer (LBC) accounts for ~ 15% of breast cancer. Here, we studied the frequency of pathogenic germline variants (PGVs) in an extended panel of genes in women affected with LBC. Methods: 302 women with LBC and 1567 without breast cancer were tested for BRCA1/2 PGVs. A subset of 134 LBC affected women who tested negative for BRCA1/2 PGVs underwent extended screening, including: ATM, CDH1, CHEK2, NBN, PALB2, PTEN, RAD50, RAD51D, and TP53.Results: 35 PGVs were identified in the group with LBC, of which 22 were in BRCA1/2. Ten actionable PGVs were identified in additional genes (ATM(4), CDH1(1), CHEK2(1), PALB2(2) and TP53(2)). Overall, PGVs in three genes conferred a significant increased risk for LBC. Odds ratios (ORs) were: BRCA1: OR = 13.17 (95%CI 2.83–66.38; P = 0.0017), BRCA2: OR = 10.33 (95%CI 4.58–23.95; P < 0.0001); and ATM: OR = 8.01 (95%CI 2.52–29.92; P = 0.0053). We did not detect an increased risk of LBC for PALB2, CDH1 or CHEK2. Conclusion: The overall PGV detection rate was 11.59%, with similar rates of BRCA1/2 (7.28%) PGVs as for other actionable PGVs (7.46%), indicating a benefit for extended panel genetic testing in LBC. We also report a previously unrecognised association of pathogenic variants in ATM with LBC.

scholarly journals 167P Role of the multi-gene panel testing for detection of pathogenic variants in patients with hereditary bilateral breast cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. S432-S433
Author(s):  
C. Filorizzo ◽  
D. Fanale ◽  
L. Incorvaia ◽  
N. Barraco ◽  
M. Bono ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Bilateral Breast Cancer ◽  
Gene Panel ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Gene Panel Testing

scholarly journals Expanding the search for germline pathogenic variants for breast cancer. How far should we go and how high should we jump? The missed opportunity!

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hikmat Abdel-Razeq
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Brca1 And Brca2 ◽  
Healthy Women ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Gene Panel Testing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Risk Reducing ◽  
Current Guidelines ◽  
Missed Opportunity

Since the identification of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes 3 decades ago, genetic testing and genetic counseling have become an integral part of routine clinical practice. The risk of breast cancer among carriers of germline pathogenic variants, like BRCA1 and BRCA2, is well established. Risk-reducing interventions, including bilateral mastectomies and salpingo-oophorectomies are both effective and have become more acceptable. Many researchers and professional societies view current guidelines as restrictive and may miss many at-risk women, and are calling to expand testing to include all patients with breast cancer, regardless of their personal or family history of cancer, while others are calling for wider adoption to even include all healthy women at age 30 or older. This review will address expanding testing in two directions; horizontally to include more patients, and even healthy women, and vertically to include more genes using next-generation sequencing-based multi-gene panel testing.

The Contextual Nature of Critical Care Judgment

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert M. Goldman ◽  
Thyyar M. Ravindranath
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Critical Care ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Clinical Judgment ◽  
Retrospective Review ◽  
Medical Decision Making ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Time Constraints ◽  
Care Decision

Critical care decision-making involves principles common to all medical decision-making. However, critical care is a remarkably distinctive form of clinical practice and therefore it may be useful to distinguish those elements particularly important or unique to ICU decision-making. The peculiar contextuality of critical care decision-making may be the best example of these elements. If so, attempts to improve our understanding of ICU decision-making may benefit from a formal analysis of its remarkable contextual nature. Four key elements of the context of critical care decisions can be identified: (1) costs, (2) time constraints, (3) the uncertain status of much clinical data, and (4) the continually changing environment of the ICU setting. These 4 elements comprise the context for the practice of clinical judgment in the ICU. The fact that intensivists are severely constrained by teh context of each case has important ramifications both for practice and for retrospective review. During retrospective review, the contextual nature of ICU judgment may be unfairly neglected by ignoring one or more of the key elements. Such neglect can be avoided if intensivists demand empathetic evaluation from reviewers.

scholarly journals Towards an App to Estimate Patient-Specific Perioperative Femur Fracture Risk

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (18) ◽  
pp. 6409 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Esposito ◽  
V. Minutolo ◽  
P. Gargiulo ◽  
H. Jonsson ◽  
M. K. Gislason ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Fracture Risk ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Strength Distribution ◽  
Bone Diseases ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Patient Specific ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Geometrical Parameters ◽  
Traffic Light

Total Hip Arthroplasty has been one of the most successful surgical procedure in terms of patient outcomes and satisfaction. However, due to increase in life expectancy and the related incidence of age-dependent bone diseases, a growing number of cases of intra-operative fractures lead to revision surgery with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Surgeons choose the type of the implant, either cemented or cementless prosthesis, on the basis of the age, the quality of the bone and the general medical conditions of the patients. Generally, no quantitative measures are available to assess the intra-operative fracture risk. Consequently, the decision-making process is mainly based on surgical operators’ expertise and qualitative information obtained from imaging. Motivated by this scenario, we here propose a mechanical-supported strategy to assist surgeons in their decisions, by giving intelligible maps of the risk fracture which take into account the interplay between the actual mechanical strength distribution inside the bone tissue and its response to the forces exerted by the implant. In the presented study, we produce charts and patient-specific synthetic “traffic-light” indicators of fracture risk, by making use of ad hoc analytical solutions to predict the stress levels in the bone by means of Computed Tomography-based mechanical and geometrical parameters of the patient. We felt that if implemented in a friendly software or proposed as an app, the strategy could constitute a practical tool to help the medical decision-making process, in particular with respect to the choice of adopting cemented or cementless implant.

scholarly journals Germline variants and phenotypic spectrum in a Canadian cohort of individuals with diffuse gastric cancer

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Aronson ◽  
C. Swallow ◽  
A. Govindarajan ◽  
K. Semotiuk ◽  
Z. Cohen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gastric Cancer ◽  
Detection Rate ◽  
Gene Panel ◽  
Diffuse Gastric Cancer ◽  
Cancer Syndrome ◽  
Detection Rates ◽  
Inherited Cancer ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Gene Panel Testing

Background CDH1 pathogenic variants (PV) cause the majority of inherited diffuse-gastric cancer (DGC), but have low detection rates and vary geographically. This study examines hereditary causes of DGC in patients from Ontario, Canada. Methods Eligible DGC cases at the Zane Cohen Centre (ZCC) underwent multi-gene panel or CDH1 single-site testing if they met 2015 International Gastric Cancer Linkage Consortium (IGCLC) criteria, isolated DGC <50 or family history suggestive of an inherited cancer syndrome. A secondary aim was to review all CDH1 families at the ZCC to assess cancer penetrance. Results 85 DGC patients underwent CDH1 (n=43) or multi-gene panel testing (n=42), and 15 (17.6%) PV or likely PV were identified.  CDH1 detection rate was 9.4% (n=8/85), and 11% (n=7/65) using IGCLC criteria.  No CDH1 PV identified in isolated DGC <40, but one PV identified in isolated DGC<50.  Multi-gene panel from 42 individuals identified 9 PV (21.4%) including CDH1, STK11, ATM, BRCA2, MLH1 and MSH2.  Review of 81 CDH1 carriers revealed that 10% had DGC (median age:48, range:38-59), 41% were unaffected (median age:53, range:26-89).  Three families had lobular-breast cancer (LBC) only.  Non-DGC/LBC malignancies included colorectal, gynecological, kidney/bladder, prostate, testicular and ductal breast. Conclusions Low detection rate of CDH1 in Ontario DGC patients.  No CDH1 PV found in isolated DGC <40, but identified in isolated DGC<50. Multi-gene panels are recommended for all DGC under age 50, and those meeting the IGCLC criteria, given overlapping phenotype with other hereditary conditions. HDGC phenotype is evolving with a spectrum of non-DGC/LBC cancers.

Limits of trust in medical AI

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 478-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua James Hatherley
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Diabetic Retinopathy ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Medical Decision Making ◽  
Hospital Readmissions ◽  
New Drugs ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Practice Of Medicine

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to revolutionise the practice of medicine. Recent advancements in the field of deep learning have demonstrated success in variety of clinical tasks: detecting diabetic retinopathy from images, predicting hospital readmissions, aiding in the discovery of new drugs, etc. AI’s progress in medicine, however, has led to concerns regarding the potential effects of this technology on relationships of trust in clinical practice. In this paper, I will argue that there is merit to these concerns, since AI systems can be relied on, and are capable of reliability, but cannot be trusted, and are not capable of trustworthiness. Insofar as patients are required to rely on AI systems for their medical decision-making, there is potential for this to produce a deficit of trust in relationships in clinical practice.

scholarly journals Multigene Panel Testing Increases the Number of Loci Associated with Gastric Cancer Predisposition

Cancers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianluca Tedaldi ◽  
Francesca Pirini ◽  
Michela Tebaldi ◽  
Valentina Zampiga ◽  
Ilaria Cangini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Gastric Cancer ◽  
Susceptibility Genes ◽  
Cancer Predisposition ◽  
Panel Testing ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Cancer Susceptibility Genes ◽  
Number Of Patients ◽  
Multigene Panel Testing ◽  
Multigene Panel

The main gene involved in gastric cancer (GC) predisposition is CDH1, the pathogenic variants of which are associated with diffuse-type gastric cancer (DGC) and lobular breast cancer (LBC). CDH1 only explains a fraction (10–50%) of patients suspected of DGC/LBC genetic predisposition. To identify novel susceptibility genes, thus improving the management of families at risk, we performed a multigene panel testing on selected patients. We searched for germline pathogenic variants in 94 cancer-related genes in 96 GC or LBC Italian patients with early-onset and/or family history of GC. We found CDH1 pathogenic variants in 10.4% of patients. In 11.5% of cases, we identified loss-of-function variants in BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, and ATM breast/ovarian cancer susceptibility genes, as well as in MSH2, PMS2, BMPR1A, PRF1, and BLM genes. In 78.1% of patients, we did not find any variants with clear-cut clinical significance; however, 37.3% of these cases harbored rare missense variants predicted to be damaging by bioinformatics tools. Multigene panel testing decreased the number of patients that would have otherwise remained genetically unexplained. Besides CDH1, our results demonstrated that GC pathogenic variants are distributed across a number of susceptibility genes and reinforced the emerging link between gastric and breast cancer predisposition.

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