Promethease might seem like an affordable option if you want to use your raw DNA data to find out more about your health, but it’s a complicated tool to use. Read this Promethease tutorial if you want to understand how to read Promethease reports, and what other alternatives you have when it comes to your health.
What is Promethease?
Promethease is a DNA analysis service that provides information on your health risks based on your genetic makeup. To use this platform, you need to have access to your raw DNA data from another DNA testing company, as they don’t offer DNA tests.
You can upload multiple data files to the same report to compare your results from different DNA tests. After you upload your file, your reports will be ready in under 10 minutes, although they say that larger data files may take longer.
The genealogy company MyHeritage acquired Promethease in 2019. You can read our full review about MyHeritage to learn more about their services.
What does a Promethease report offer you?
With Promethease, you’ll get an extremely detailed and filterable analysis of your raw DNA data. The reports also offer direct links to SNPedia, a database that collects published research on the relationship between your SNPs and health.
SNPedia, although a useful source of information, can be difficult to understand due to the extremely technical language it uses. Because of this and other aspects of Promethease, you might need to take your time to learn how to read your Promethease report, as it might not be easily understood by those who don’t have a background in genetics.
Promethease stands out for providing customers with the ability to filter, organize, and compare genetic information. Understanding Promethease reports, however, might be an uphill task.
They will give you extensive information on your health for as little as $12. You’ll have access to an expansive collection of peer-reviewed studies to help you further explore how your genes affect you. Still, Promethease doesn’t make an effort to translate this scientific data to a language that’s easily comprehended by anyone.
Plus, despite offering you information on your risk for many health conditions, you won’t get any guidance on how to counteract your genetic variants to improve your quality of life from Promethease.
It’s also important to keep in mind that a report from this company will only take into consideration your genetics to determine your risk for a disease or health outcome – you won’t get any results based on environmental data or any other source of health data.
How to read Promethease reports?
When you access your results page, you’ll encounter a tutorial on how to read Promethease reports, with over 30 view steps. This platform is not as user-friendly as you might expect if compared to other well-known DNA analysis services.
As the reports are based on the scientific literature from SNPedia, they are often criticized for being too technical and difficult to read. You’ll be able to search genes and variants by using filters that are readily available on the right side of your screen.
Promethease Reports
By default, you’ll only be able to view your top 10 reports. You can click the ‘2x’ button on the bottom of the page to double the number of entries shown, or you can type a number in the filter section to see more results.
Promethease explains that they do this because by showing more reports, your browser might become slow or unresponsive. Plus, they say that’s unlikely that you’ll read all of the information provided to you.
Your results are color-coded according to a genotype’s repute, based on a general opinion, and can be changed by users. They can be:
- Green: Good
- Gray: Not Set
- Red: Bad
Promethease says that if you read through the literature and find that a particular genotype is convincingly good or bad, you should edit its page for future users. Otherwise, they should remain as ‘Not Set’.
The reports are available in HTML as an interactive webpage. If you want a PDF version, you can print to PDF from your browser. Again, the company doesn’t recommend that you do so for all of your results.
You can also view your results in a table format that can be column-sorted and exported as a PDF.
Promethease Table View
You can search their extensive database by using the progressive text search bar, fixed at the top of the page. As you type in a term, the number of results shown dynamically changes to accommodate your query.
If you want to understand the technical terms used by both SNPedia and Promethease, you can read their glossary here.
Alternative
Although it’s indeed important to learn your genetic risks to health conditions, Promethease doesn’t make an effort to make this information easier to understand. Plus, the reports don’t offer any guidance on what you can do to counteract the negative effects of your genes.
After learning how to read Promethease reports, you might be wondering if other services don’t offer a more accessible option for those who don’t have a background in genetics.
If you want to gain insights into your health through your genes, SelfDecode might be a better option. SelfDecode offers you prioritize and personalized health recommendations tailored to your genes through reports on over 30 health topics, with more coming out constantly.
What’s more, SelfDecode uses cutting-edge AI and machine learning to analyze up to 83 million genetic variants to deliver the most accurate results.
With SelfDecode, you’ll get easy-to-understand genetic reports based on the latest scientific research. For the scientifically curious, SelfDecode includes all the scientific studies used to generate the reports for easy access. You can also upload your lab test results to SelfDecode Labs to get tailored advice on how to optimize over 500 lab markers for a more complete picture of your health.
You can either upload your raw DNA data to SelfDecode, or you can choose to get the SelfDecode DNA test.
Takeaway: Is learning how to read Promethease reports worth it?
Promethease offers an affordable option if you want to know more about your genetic risks to certain health conditions. As it is, they don’t offer a DNA test, so you’ll need to get your DNA tested by another company before using this platform.
If you want to dive deep into the world of genetics, or if you have a background in this field, Promethease could be a good option for you. However, other services such as SelfDecode also offer you science-backed DNA reports, with peer-reviewed studies embedded throughout, but in a more user-friendly format.
While learning how to read Promethease reports might be the way to go for some people, Promethease still fails to provide health advice to help you improve your health. If you want to learn how to use your genetic information to make lifestyle changes, SelfDecode is a better choice.
Related
- Promethease Review: What can DNA research tell us?
- Top 10 Sites To Upload Your Raw DNA Data
- Best DNA Test for Health + 6 Things you Need to Know
