Background: Conducting biomedical research within out-of-pocket self-pay healthcare populations presents unique challenges in understanding both health outcomes and quality of life and enhancing cost-effective services and treatments.
Objectives: Pilot study objective was to measure willingness of otherwise “healthy” individuals seeking aesthetics services to participate in clinical research. Beyond the pilot, the overarching goal is to develop a program and digital registry that engages with individuals seeking aesthetic services, integrates their data from surveys, electronic health records, genetic testing and establish a biobank.
Methods: Pilot study is enrolling 500 healthy adults in the United States receiving services from three aesthetic dermatology centers and/or enrolled in online communities within the LunaDNA platform to generate a participant-centric skin-health cohort. Center-sourced participants were recruited using a post-card with a QR code at centers with sites in California, Arizona, and Virginia. When scanned the QR code directs a potential subject to a recruitment page to create a profile, consent to the study and complete a series of surveys on willingness to participate in clinical research, demographics, skin characteristics, and personal health. Participants could also opt to share existing genetic information received from 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritageDNA, or other consumer genetic testing service.
Results: As of February, 2023, 351 subjects were enrolled, 86% (n=303) enrolled via LunaDNA, 14% (n=48) from aesthetics clinics. Participants were mostly female (74% LunaDNA; 100% clinic cohort), and 46% of LunaDNA participants and 75% clinic cohort were younger than 45 years of age. 187 have completed the demographics survey, 294 completed the willingness to participate survey, 224 completed a personal health survey and 233 completed skin characteristics survey. Respondents were likely or very likely to participate in studies with minimally invasive tissue collection. Of the subjects enrolled via LunaDNA, 75% (n=228) have a genotyping file, and 93% were willing to share these for our research program.
Conclusions: Preliminary demographic characteristics of the aesthetics cohort suggest there are some age differences between the online and center-sourced participants. The Luna cohort will be expanded because of the ability to integrate genotypic/DNA files, which are valuable in the short term while biospecimen collection strategy is underway. Final results of the cohort will be presented.
