[Roberts:] Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. If you could take a test to find out if you'll develop a disease like Alzheimer's, would you do it? And what if you got terrible news, what would you do? We're "Paging our Dr. Sanjay Gupta," to get the pros and cons of finding out what is in your future. Dr. Gupta joins us from Atlanta this morning. So what is this test and how reliable is it?
[Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Cnn Chief Medical Correspondent:] Well, you know, there are genetic tests for all sorts of different diseases out there. The medical community as a whole has not been really enthusiastic about suggesting many of these genetic tests for a few different reason. One is more often than not, they're not definitive. Two is, sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. So it's not really being proactive. And three, there was this real concern that it would cause psychological stress on someone if the genes came back positive and it's sort of that last point that researchers decided to study. Does it cause the psychological stress? As you mentioned, John, I had my own DNA tested as well. Truth be told, excuse me, I didn't really know what to expect when I had that testing done. But just was tested for a variety of things. In my case, nothing devastating showed up, but had something shown up specifically, without saying for Alzheimer's, what would have been the psychological affect. Researchers say that people who come back negative, their test come back negative. They don't have the gene. They have a benefit. They have some sense of relief. But what they also found was that the people who came back positive, at least within the year of testing they tested these people, didn't seem to have a lot of undue anxiety about this. They didn't seem to be psychologically affected by this. This is important, John, because again, it's been one of those reasons the medical community as a whole has said let's not get too excited about these tests. It just may cause more psychological harm than good, John.
[Roberts:] You know, one of the things that I'm thinking about, personally, is my mother, 95 years old, has got advanced Alzheimer's disease. But to the best of my knowledge, she is the only person in the family to have developed it. So you think this is hereditary, and would I logically assume that I'm going to develop it at some point? With this what would this test do for me?
[Gupta:] Right. So, in some ways, you're the perfect person to be asking that question. Someone who does not have symptoms, someone who is an adult of someone with Alzheimer's. You could be tested and what they're testing for specifically is something known as a lipoprotein. You don't need to remember that name but if you have one copy of it, you have a certain degree of risk. If you have two copies of it, that risk goes higher. You could be tested, but again, it's not saying for sure you're going to get it. And as you know, John, there might not be a lot that you can necessarily do about it.
[Roberts:] Right.
[Gupta:] But with regard to the anxiety around it, a lot of people believe that you're not going to have anymore anxiety necessarily if even you come back positive. Now part of that could be that you know, you're so far away from the age range, which you might develop Alzheimer's. It's not just something you're thinking about yet. And it's one reason that researchers believe that it didn't cause anxiety. It could cause anxiety later on down the road as you get older, perhaps.
[Roberts:] All right. Sanjay Gupta for us this morning. Doc, it's always great to see you. Thanks so much.
[Gupta:] Thanks, John.
[Roberts:] Fifty-two minutes after the hour.