The Test & Reports

Anyone. Children can be tested with a parent or guardian’s consent. When testing a child under 18 years of age a parent or guardian with parental responsibility for the child must provide consent on the child's behalf. Since our genes are fixed from birth, the age of testing makes no difference to the results. You only need to be tested once. Your genes don't change but you can change lifestyle & nutrition which may limit some of the negative effects of your genetics, and so improve our health and wellbeing.

The test won’t be affected by your diet, medical conditions or medications/supplements you are taking. The only requirement is to abstain from eating/drinking for at least 1 hour before testing.

LifecodeGx® are really careful with your sensitive data, protecting and storing it securely. They hold the minimum client data for the minimum amount of time. Once received by LifecodeGx®, samples are allocated a barcode and all other client identification is removed. The test is used only to create the reports which are only shared with the authorised practitioner. Each test is processed in their ISO certified UK laboratory and all samples are completely destroyed after 3 months. All client genotyping data is marked for destruction at 5 months and completely destroyed by 6 months. The client report, the data and the DNA sample is never (and will never be) shared with, or sold to third parties. All of the data extraction and analysis is done in the UK.

The genotyping methodology used by LifecodeGx® is very accurate (at least 99.9%). The process of extracting genome data from the sample is very complex and occasionally there are areas of an individual's genome that may not be extracted, or there may be some anomaly making accuracy around a specific area of the genome uncertain. There are rigorous quality control checks to ensure that only accurate data is reported. Results that fail quality control are not reported and are shown on the report as a ‘no result’. "No results' are usually caused by the structure of the individual genome so re-testing is unlikely to release this data. The science behind the interpretation is fully referenced in each report. Reports are reviewed regularly by an expert team to ensure they are up to date and clinically relevant.

No. There are very specific genetic mutations that are extensive and highly predictive of a particular medical condition. These are the ones the NHS in the UK (or other healthcare providers) investigate for disease diagnosis. Neither Vertical Health, nor LifecodeGx® offers this type of testing and we suggest you talk to your healthcare provider about accessing this, alongside any appropriate genetic counselling. However you might want to consider Nutrigenomics testing as well. Understanding how your body works as a whole (for example hormone balance & detoxification in response to stress etc) could have a significant impact.

Nutri-GENETICS investigates how the genome affects the body's response to specific nutrients. (i.e "how does MY DNA affect how I handle this food/nutrient?") Nutri-GENOMICS includes Nutrigenetics and goes further to investigate how nutrients, bioactive food compounds and lifestyle actions can influence gene expression, protein production and metabolic pathways within the body by turning genes 'on' and 'off'. (i.e. "How does this food change the ACTIVITY of MY genes?") Nutri-GENOMICS investigates how the nutrients YOU consume and the lifestyle choices that you make CHANGE the message in your genetic code (for better or worse). It incorporates the epigenetic effect of nutrients - Nutri-epigenetics.