Excerpt from the 23andme Reports Overview at Youtube
The price has gone up but so has the amount of information you will receive. Those of you who bought kits after the FDA shut down the health information at 23andme will now get the new improved reports. All of us testers will receive an email once our accounts have transitioned over.
I received 12 emails today announcing this! As soon as any of the accounts I manage transition over to the new software, I will write a report here on my blog. The accounts that already had health reports were promised in the email that they will “continue to have access to [their] current health reports. The new experience will include redesigned versions of many of the same health and ancestry reports that you currently have.”
Blogger Andrea Badger published the following report on the DNA-NEWBIE mailing list:
23andme has received approval from the FDA to provide “60+ personalized genetic reports covering health, ancestry, and traits.”
The lists of reports can be seen here: https://www.23andme.com/service/ There are 36 autosomal recessive carrier status reports, four ‘wellness’ reports, and about 19 trait reports. The price for 23andMe will now be $199 instead of $99.
The layout of the website is also changing. These YouTube videos provide a preview of what the new site will look like.
Reports Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pon3zOxMH8M
DNA Relatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq2ddlPpVI0
Share and Compare Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8pNr90ahN0
There are some FAQs here: https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/categories/201639628-The-New-23andMe
Thanks Andrea!
The old health reports were a joke. You can’t tell somebody they have an X% chance of getting condition Y when they only looked at a handful of the known SNPs. In the case of breast cancer, they ignored several important ones. Kind of hard to put much stock in their health information until they check all known SNPs for a condition and recognize there are probably a lot more unknown ones to be uncovered. For schizophrenia, there are 108 markers that should be checked and 23andMe only talks about 2.
If I were starting today with what I know now, I’d only test at Ancestry.com and transfer to FTDNA and GEDMATCH.
When I started, 23andme was the only autosomal test out there. There r some old timers who still prefer 23andme, because that’s where the manage several test from when 23 was the only company. They put a lot of time and money into 23 and promote 23 so their matches will increase.
Don’t be left in the past. Test with anyone, but 23andme.
Adam –
I cannot agree with you. If your ancestors are Scandinavian, there are way more of your potential cousins tested at 23andme than elsewhere. If you have colonials then yes ancestry. Ashkenanzim? Then family tree DNA (which is really best all around for genetic genealogists).
It really depends on what a person’s goals are. 23andme was founded with the idea of searching for genetic basis of various diseases (founders mother-in-law had Parkinson’s as I recall). It is clear that this is still their mission and the many benefits for genetic genealogists may well have kept them going during the FDA shut down of health results. But we are not their primary concern.
These days you can test anywhere and then upload to GEDmatch and DNA.land
So leave 23andme for those who want the health results …
Ms. Kitty, I agree with you. I tested with 23andme before Ancestry.com offered tests. I then tested with Ancestry. I uploaded both tests on GEDmatch. Each company showed similar, yet different results. I believe that they each test for different things: 23andme is more scientific, Ancestry is focused on your ancestors. I am glad I did both tests as I have more information.
Adam, my name is Glennda. I am pretty new at this DNA stuff. I have a large family tree at Ancestry.com and have had for over 15 years with a lot of family. I did do their DNA test and got my results back. But there was no health and wellness attached. So I am looking at sites like 23 and me, gedmatch and FTDNA and would like to upload my ancestry dna file. Is is possible with 23 and me to do that?
Glenda, you can get health results from your ancestry DNA data at http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease for a mere $5 and you can also upload to other sites to find more relatives and see which hits of Dna are a match. Read this post of mine http://blog.kittycooper.com/2015/09/please-upload-your-ancestry-raw-data-to-a-site-with-a-chromosome-browser/
The price hike for the newly added health reports is wholly unjustified. 23andMe is still not able to provide the health information that they used to, just carrier information, which is if one parent is a disease carrier and the other isn’t.
Once people realize what it is that 23andMe is now reporting on, they will realize that there is little value in these types of tests except for in newborn screening or in children/parents in need of genetic counseling.
My point is, the majority of people do not have the recessive conditions in the new health reports. If they did, they would already know about them before they ever even considered personal genomic testing. Thankfully there’s always AncestryDNA which is still $99 and I hear Livewello processes them for Health reports too.
I just tried sending messages to two of the matches without names. After sending the message and clicking on the gender icon the message sent still appears. not sure if it means it was sent or just a way to let us know the message was sent.
William, you may have caught the site during updates or perhaps you are confusing the ability to make a note about a profile with sending a message. I assure you that you can no longer make contact with anonymous members although they still appear in your results. When you click on a person’s sex or image when anonymous you get a little window where you can set the relationship and make a note.
I am one of 23andme’s supporters…I also have DNA results on FTDNA and Ancestry DNA, and there are strengths and weaknesses for each service.
Matches: I have found more “usable” (i.e., it’s possible to find the genealogical connection) matches through 23andme [23] and Ancestry DNA [Anc] than on FTDNA, where I rarely can find a family connection, even with a fair amount of DNA overlap (I finally found ONE). In contrast, I assisted (as did others) someone on 23 looking for her father, who was a sperm donor — and she eventually found him. I found a second cousin in Norway, and others with clear connections on both sides of the family.
Other features related to genealogy: I like being able to sort by location, surname, or haplogroup, or on whatever is available, which 23 allows. The response from users is weak on 23, which will likely change soon. Anc has a much better family tree than the other two (which is where I built mine…to be fair, I’ve just dabbled with My Heritage, a fairly recent family tree option on 23, because I don’t want to spend $10/month or to be shown that information exists but you can’t have it unless you pay up (Anc is also to be faulted for this). I appreciate 23andme’s NOT soliciting me for $ for additional products, which FTDNA does, or for information, much of which is freely available or available through library/academic institution sites. Ancestry’s “hints”, the MRCA for a few linked relatives, the “shared surnames” of matches and info on your relationship to people in your tree are sweet features that I wish the others had.
DNA: Anc is weaker with respect to DNA: they don’t provide the % overlapping DNA, chromosome by chromosome areas of overlap (matching segment info), or permit comparisons of chromosomes that the other two do (I love 23’s chromosomal “map painting”, and hope they keep it – mine is still working).
Ancestral origins: The ancestral origins info was wildly disparate on these three tests. My maternal grandfather grew up in Norway, as had his ancestors for hundreds of years. His wife came from a line of people that originated in Norway and married other Norwegians or Norwegian-Americans exclusively (not even Swedes). My father claimed to be English, Scottish and Dutch, and his paternal line can be traced back to Holland. His surname was Anderson, which he said was Scottish. The standard interpretation from 23 says I’m 21% Scandinavian; speculative is 33.5%. Anc says I’m 57% Scandinavian (and that a typical Scandinavian today has about 84% of their DNA from that region). (Anc is said to overemphasize Scandinavian ancestry, but I suspect it’s pretty close to the truth). FTDNA says I’m 99% Scandinavian. It’s not clear whether 23 or Anc is closer to the truth, but FTDNA is clearly inaccurate on this one!
As for haplogroups, on 23andme, my mitochondrial DNA says I’m H2a2; on FTDNA, my full mtDNA says H2a2a1. I don’t think Anc tests for this. So far, the added information from FTDNA has not been very useful.
Health information: From what I’ve read, FTDNA stripped about 3,000 snps related to medical info, making it much less useful for health issues. The raw data from any of them can be used in other applications that will provide you with a good deal of medical info (I subscribed to 23andme when it could provide this, and have found it interesting and useful). While it is true that recessive gene diseases are not common, it’s not true that you would know that you were a carrier. If you calculate the chances of unknowingly finding another person with that recessive gene, and both passing it on to your child, you can see why it might not be known that it’s “in the family”. E.g., my brother and I both carried the most common mutation for cystic fibrosis, which neither of us knew until we received our results from 23andme.
Do the new $99 and $199 tests from 23andme test the same number of SNP’s?
Sorry not to have answered you before Raj, I missed your comment. I think so but I really do not know that for sure. My understanding was that is is the same test but you do not get the health analysis at the lower price.