Version 2.8 of our flagship Variant Report has just been released and is available for purchase! All reports previously run are being updated to v2.8 as fast as we can. As usual the process should be done within a week, so long as you haven’t requested the removal of your genome file, so check back often to see if your reports have been updated.

 

This version represents an important but subtle paradigm shift in the way we research SNPs for our reports.

Previously, we would pick a topic we knew would be valuable to include, go to 23andMe’s database (as they were the primary source of genomes our reports are run against) and find all the genes and SNPs 23andMe sequenced for to include in our reports. 23andMe does regularly change which SNPs they sequence for, however, and in recent years more people are using Ancestry.com’s service as well. The most recent rotation of SNPs in 23andMe’s test was fairly jarring for us. Dozens of SNPs we have in our reports were no longer there, and new SNPs we would have been interested in with previous additions to the reports were added. Meanwhile Ancestry.com updated their own test and the result happened to be wonderful for people running our reports.

We made the decision with this update to no longer tie our reports to a source of genomes in any way. Now we pick a topic and look for all the genes and SNPs that have clinical relevance – and, as always, peer reviewed research to back that relevance up – regardless if they exist in any genomic test we know about. If we find a SNP with clinical relevance and it’s not in the raw genomic data from your prefered testing source it simply won’t show up in the report. This means that if 23andMe or Ancestry.com or whomever else adds that SNP to their tests in the future anyone who runs our reports will still benefit from it without any updates needed.

However, it also means that we will release updates even if only a few of the SNPs in them are in any given genomic test. This recent update adds almost 50 new SNPs to our database, however people with certain versions of the 23andMe and Ancestry.com chips might only see one or two of them show up in the results. Coincidentally, we find that the latest version of the Ancestry.com test has the best results with most of the new SNPs showing up in our reports, but the only thing that is certain is that SNPs will continue to filter in and out of genetic tests in ways that only those organizations can directly control or predict.

Genetic sequencing is getting cheaper and easier every year. We are confident that future tests will have an increasing number of SNPs available to us and this strategy of including SNPs we have researched regardless of whether or not current tests look for them will only pay off in the long run.

 

Sulfite/Sulfate/Oxalate Transport

So what is in this update? We have researched and are including nearly 50 SNPs from the following genes in this new section:

  • GALNS
  • GLB1
  • GNS
  • HGSNAT
  • IDS
  • IDUA
  • SGSH
  • TMPPE/GLB1

We have added the sulfite/sulfate/oxalate transport genes in for many dealing with chronic illness and specifically for the autism community. Many with autism have these transport issues and we hope that their  practitioners will find this update useful. The recent DNA Ancestry chip will have the most information.
How do these sulfate anion transporters work? Their job is to transport sulfate, sulfite and oxalate. Unfortunately when someone’s transporters are impaired, they may have problems with mucopolysaccharides and have too much oxalate on board.
What happens when too much oxalate is on board with these transporters compromised? These people may be sulfate and sulfite wasting.
Why is this important? For example glutathione is a sulfur based molecule and without glutathione we do not detox well.
We at MTHFR Support hope that practitioners find this new section useful.