The clinical use and deployment of genetic risk scores needs to be informed by the issues surrounding tests that currently would unequivocally provide much greater benefit to the subset of the world’s population which is already on the positive end of healthcare disparities. Conversely, African descent populations, which already endure many of the largest health disparities globally, are often predicted marginally better, if at all, compared to random (Figure 4F). They are therefore least likely to benefit from improvements in precision healthcare delivery from genetic risk scores with existing data due to human population history and study biases. This is a major concern globally and especially in the U.S., which already leads other middle-and high-income countries in both real and perceived healthcare disparities69,70. Thus, we would strongly urge that any discourse on clinical use of PRS include a careful, quantitative assessment of the economic and health disparities impacts on underrepresented populations that might be unintentionally introduced, and raise awareness about how to eliminate these disparities.
