How Do I Know if I Need Additional Methylation Testing?
Many people, at this point, have gotten single-gene MTHFR testing. Countless vendors out there have been advertising MTHFR testing as a cure-all for quite some time, so many went for that testing and have their A1298C and C677T results sitting in their hard drive.
Now, however, these people are presented with the opportunity to pursue further testing for the over 20 other gene SNPs involved in the process of methylation, and they’re not sure if they need that testing or whether such testing would be redundant given their existing MTHFR results.
How do you know if you should get additional methylation testing above and beyond an MTHFR gene test?
The answer is really quite simple:
If your MTHFR results were positive—i.e. you have a homozygous result for either MTHFR A1298 or C677T or a heterozygous result for at least the C677T SNP—then you do not need additional folate-related methylation testing. You are already known to have a deficit in folate activation, so you do not need a test for the other several genes involved in the process.
However, if your MTHFR results were negative—i.e. you have no deficit in either MTHFR gene SNP, or just one heterozygous result in the A1298C SNP—then you would likely benefit from additional methylation-related genetic testing. This is because we cannot rule out a folate activation deficit by your negative results here. You could still have deficits in one or more of the several other genes involved in this process, and your MTHFR test just couldn’t pick those up.
How do you know if you should get additional methylation testing above and beyond an MTRR/MTR gene test?
The same goes for B12 processing. If you had a positive result for MTR and/or MTRR, you do not need additional methylation genetic testing in B12 activation. If, however, your results were negative, you would benefit from additional testing.
Are there any other reasons to get additional testing above and beyond just an MTHFR test?
The one other highly important reason to consider additional testing beyond MTHFR SNP testing has to do with overmethylation. Overmethylation is quite an issue; it can lead to symptoms like anxiety, heart racing, muscle tightness, etc. and can be due to deficits in other gene SNPs. Most importantly, a “slow” COMT variant can significantly increase the likely of developing overmethylation-type symptoms due to a decreased rate of processing of catecholamines—activating neurotransmitters. For such people, taking methyl-folate is actually not recommended, even if they had a positive MTHFR test.
So if you’ve dealt with overmethylation symptoms or are just not sure whether taking methyl-folate is actually helping you, consider getting additional testing, making sure to include the COMT gene.
Take these factors into account as you weight the pros and cons of getting additional testing beyond just MTHFR (and/or MTRR/MTR) gene testing. Our tests do include the full gamut of important methylation-related gene SNPs. Feel free to share this with friends and family who might need to hear this.
