Discrete choice modelling to understand the influence of sharing polygenic risk scores related to cardiovascular disease risk with primary care patients

Introduction Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death in the UK and globally. People identified as being at high risk may receive further investigations or preventive treatment. Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) give a summary of overall underlying genetic risk, and may be used to give additional information that GPs can use alongside other information about the patient to determine which interventions, if any, would be beneficial. Methods and Analysis Two discrete choice experiments (DCEs) with 2000 participants recruited from the UK general adult population. The first DCE aims to determine people’s attitudes about getting their PRS in the context of cardiovascular disease, and what factors may influence this. The second DCE aims to determine how people are likely to react to this risk information, and their stated probability of undergoing further investigation or interventions for disease management. This aims to provide new, quantitative information of whether individuals’ health-related behaviour is likely to be modified by knowledge of one’s PRS. Results from the pilot study will be used to inform the design of the main study, and the analysis will use multinomial logit models. Marginal rates of substitution between attributes, and heterogeneity analysis comparing people with different demographic characteristics, will also be carried out. Ethics and Dissemination Ethics approval (reference: R89898/RE001) was obtained through the Medical Sciences Interdivisional Research Ethical Committee (MS IDREC) at the University of Oxford. The results of this research will be submitted to academic journals and will be presented at conferences.