ACB President Bernie Croal speaks to The Guardian Science Weekly podcast about Direct-to-Consumer Testing

The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast has interviewed ACB President Bernie Croal for its latest episode, titled What can we really learn from home blood testing kits?  

Given the expanding use of Direct-to-Consumer Testing (DTCT), this episode highlights the uncertainties around regulation, accuracy, appropriateness and the relative lack of interpretation accompanying such test results. Increased patient anxiety and a burden placed on the NHS are mentioned as potential negative impacts of this trend.  

Bernie Croal says that an increase in unnecessary testing inevitably creates ‘questions about false positive [and] false negative results’ and raises the ‘likelihood you will get abnormal results that actually aren’t abnormal at all.’  

In terms of the aftercare offered by some DTCT providers, he says a common recommendation given to patients is ‘You should see your GP.’ The ACB President expresses a concern that such a route ‘will inevitably lead to more patients knocking on the door of their GP’ when the latter are pressed for time. ‘There will be a portion of society, the worried well, who are persuaded there is something wrong with them.’  

Emma Wilkinson, health journalist and associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, says in the episode that she has ‘spoken to GPs who say they’ve had people coming in with a report from a blood test […] ordered online, wanting further tests, […] being worried about the results or not knowing what the results mean.’ Some of these GPs told her that ‘if they felt it was needed, they would then have to reorder that test result anyway.’  

You can listen to the 16-minute Science Weekly episode here. 

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