Robert Cook-Deegan (Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA) and colleagues explain that whole genome analysis has the potential to significantly improve medical care if utilized correctly, but say that interpreting variants of unknown significance can prove challenging. Private genetic databases run by companies, such as Myriad Genetics in the USA, contain important information that may be vital to interpreting such variants, but “incomplete access to those databases threatens to impede the clinical interpretation of genomic medicine,” write the investigators in a policy article in the European Journal of Human Genetics.
