ArticleCell2019
Screening Human Embryos for Polygenic Traits Has Limited Utility.
Article in Cell, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
65 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Shared genetic architectures of educational attainment in East Asian and European populations.Nature human behaviour · 2024Pooled it
- Embryo editing and embryo selection need joint governance.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Decision-making criteria in polygenic embryo screening: A survey of reproductive medicine physicians.Genetics in medicine : official journal of the American College of Medical Genetics · 2026Article
- Scalable high resolution ancestry deconvolution for genomic data.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic diseases: A novel paradigm in embryo selection.Biochemistry and biophysics reports · 2026Review
- PEStimate: predicting offspring disease risk after polygenic embryo screening.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- [Application of polygenic risk score-based comprehensive breast cancer risk assessment in preimplantation embryo selection for aZhejiang da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Zhejiang University. Medical sciences · 2026Article
- Modeling polygenic embryo screening in real-world IVF patients demonstrates limitations on efficacy.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Governance of polygenic embryo screening: a qualitative study on the perspectives of clinicians and patients.Fertility and sterility · 2026Article
- Clinical implications of rare and common variation in preimplantation genetic testing for breast cancer.NPJ genomic medicine · 2026Article
- A context-specific evaluation of polygenic embryo screening in best-prognosis preimplantation genetic testing cycles.Human reproduction open · 2026Article
- Ethical and social implications of implementing polygenic embryo screening into clinical care: A scoping review.Genetics in medicine open · 2026Review
- Survey of U.S. reproductive medicine clinicians' attitudes on polygenic embryo screening.NPJ genomic medicine · 2025Article
- A combined genomic arrhythmia propensity score delineates cumulative risk.Cell reports. Medicine · 2025Article
- Singaporean attitudes to cognitive enhancement: a cross-sectional survey.Journal of medical ethics · 2025Article
- Clinical implications of rare and common variation in preimplantation genetic testing for breast cancer.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Consent and its discontents: the case of UK Biobank.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- Social and Behavioral Genomics: On the Ethics of the Research and Its Downstream Applications.Annual review of genomics and human genetics · 2025Review
- Predicting the direction of phenotypic difference.Nature communications · 2025Article
5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The increasing proportion of variance in human complex traits explained by polygenic scores, along with progress in preimplantation genetic diagnosis, suggests the possibility of screening embryos for traits such as height or cognitive ability. However, the expected outcomes of embryo screening are unclear, which undermines discussion of associated ethical concerns. Here, we use theory, simulations, and real data to evaluate the potential gain of embryo screening, defined as the difference in trait value between the top-scoring embryo and the average embryo. The gain increases very slowly with the number of embryos but more rapidly with the variance explained by the score. Given current technology, the average gain due to screening would be ≈2.5 cm for height and ≈2.5 IQ points for cognitive ability. These mean values are accompanied by wide prediction intervals, and indeed, in large nuclear families, the majority of children top-scoring for height are not the tallest.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.