Season to gather your family health history

WASHINGTON - Make Grandma spill the beans: Uncovering the diseases that lurk in your family tree can trump costly genetic testing in predicting what illnesses you and your children are likely to face.

It may sound old-fashioned, but a Cleveland Clinic study comparing which method best uncovered an increased risk of cancer helps confirm the value of a family health history.

All it costs is a little time questioning your relatives, yet good family health trees are rare. A government survey estimated that less than a third of families have one - and time-crunched doctors seldom push their patients to remedy that.

"I view family health histories as back to the future," says Dr. Charis Eng, a cancer geneticist at the Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute. "It's the best-kept secret in health care."

Holiday gatherings can be a good chance to gather the information, as can reunions or even funerals. The U.S. Surgeon General operates a free website - familyhistory.hhs.gov - that helps people create a family health history and share it electronically with relatives and their doctor.

Get both side, too

However you do it, get the scoop on both sides of the family, says another study of 2,500 women. Researchers found that women not only know less about the health of their paternal relatives, they tend to dismiss the threat of breast cancer if it's on Dad's side.

"It's a risk, no matter what," says Dr. Wendy Rubinstein of NorthShore University Health System in Chicago, who presented the research last week at a meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Far too often, a family health history consists of whatever you happen to jot down on that clipboard in the doctor's waiting room.

Looking for patterns of familial illness can predict someone's brewing health risks, so gaps can be a problem.

How does a good history compare with those online genomic testing services, sold without a doctor's prescription for hundreds of dollars, that analyze DNA glitches and predict people's predisposition to various diseases?

Family history vs. DNA

To find out, the Cleveland Clinic's Eng recruited 44 people - 22 patients in her family cancer clinic and their spouses - for a family health history and a saliva test from one of those genomic services, Navigenics, to calculate their risk for colon cancer and breast or prostate cancer.

Both approaches classified about 40 percent of participants as having above-average risk - but they picked the same people only about half the time. For example, the genomic screening missed all nine people with a strong family risk of colon cancer, five of whom Eng's clinic gave extra scrutiny to prove they carried a specific gene mutation.

On the other hand, Navigenics listed eight men at risk for prostate cancer when their family history predicted a risk no higher than average.

Why the difference? No matter the brand, genomic screening takes a broad look at DNA variations, including some that scientists aren't sure play a big role. Yet it often doesn't include high-profile gene mutations that are linked for specific diseases and can require more specialized testing, Eng says.

Navigenics didn't return a call for comment.

"Family history remains the best genetic tool we have, but health care providers are not taking advantage" of it, says Dr. Maren Scheuner of the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in Los Angeles, who is leading a pilot project to add family cancer histories to the VA's electronic medical records at two area clinics.

Family health histories: How to get started