How do you calculate genetic risk?

We extract DNA from your saliva sample. Then we analyse your DNA to get data on millions of your genetic variants. Genetic variants are differences in the genetic information between one person and another.

Some of these variants increase your risk of developing a condition, while others decrease your risk.

We know which variants are important for each condition thanks to research data from hundreds of thousands of people.

Each variant we look at only has a small impact on its own. But added together the variants can have a big impact on your likelihood of developing a condition.

For each condition, we combine the impact of millions of variants into a score. This is called a polygenic risk score or PRS.

We calculate the average risk for someone of your sex and ethnicity. We do this by analysing data sources that tell us how likely it is that different UK population groups will develop a specific health condition.

We then use your polygenic risk score to refine our calculation and give your personal risk estimate based on your genetics. For cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes risk estimates, we refine the provided QRISK®3 and QDiabetes®-2018 with the polygenic risk score.

We estimate your risk of developing each condition over a given time frame. We select the time frame that best aligns these results with relevant clinical guidelines. For cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, we provide a 10-year risk. For breast cancer and prostate cancer, we provide a total lifetime risk (defined as from birth to age 80).