The consumer watchdog group the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a lawsuit against a diagnostics company called EpicGenetics on Wednesday, alleging that the company is making false and misleading claims in marketing its blood tests for fibromyalgia and other diseases.
The lawsuit focuses on two tests marketed by EpicGenetics — the FM/a Test and the 100Sure Test — which the company describes using nearly identical language. The Center charges that these tests are not nearly as accurate as their maker claims they are, and that they aren’t good at distinguishing between fibromyalgia and other diseases with similar symptoms such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The nonprofit also argues that EpicGenetics, “having failed to create a test that accurately diagnoses” fibromyalgia, has made up a disease to create a raison d’être for the 100Sure Test.
The suit cites a STAT investigation of EpicGenetics published in October 2021. The STAT story showed that EpicGenetics was using an aborted clinical trial at Massachusetts General Hospital to sell an unproven diagnostic, which can cost $1,080 when not covered by insurance. If you tested positive on the FM/a Test, advertising said, you could be eligible for a fibromyalgia treatment study. The trial had been funded by EpicGenetics founder and CEO Bruce Gillis, who abruptly stopped sending money to Mass. General before the research could get off the ground, even while his company continued to promote it as an opportunity open to those who’d taken the test.