What is Pharmacogenetics?
Pharmacogenetics is the use of genetics to predict how an individual will respond to a given drug. Drugs need to be metabolized by enzymes in order to have an effect. Many enzymes have several different forms, or alleles, which differ in their ability to breakdown a drug. Pharmacogenetics is the characterization of various alleles’ abilities to metabolize different drugs.
Pharmacogenetics is the study of how individual people respond to medicines based on their genetic makeup. When you take a drug or are exposed to an environmental toxin, enzymes in your liver, intestines and other tissues go to work to breakdown that drug so that it can be excreted. Your genes provide the instructions for making these enzymes, several of which may be involved in the breakdown and excretion of any particular drug. Your specific genetic makeup determines how these enzymes interact and whether they work faster or slower than average.
Pharmacogenetics is the study of how the actions of and reactions to drugs vary with the patient’s genes. All individuals respond differently to drug treatments; some positively, others with little obvious change in their conditions and yet others with side effects or allergic reactions. Much of this variation is known to have a genetic basis. Pharmacogenetics is a subset of pharmacogenomics which uses genomic/bioinformatic methods to identify genomic correlates, for example SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms), characteristic of particular patient response profiles and use those markers to inform the administration and development of therapies. Strikingly such approaches have been used to “resurrect” drugs thought previously to be ineffective, but subsequently found to work with in subset of patients or in optimizing the doses of chemotherapy for particular patients.
All individuals respond differently to drug treatments; some positively, others with little obvious change in their conditions and yet others with side effects or allergic reactions. Much of this variation is known to have a genetic basis. Pharmacogenetics is a subset of pharmacogenomics which uses genomic/bioinformatic methods to identify genomic correlates, for example SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms), characteristic of particular patient response profiles and use those markers to inform the administration and development of therapies. Strikingly, such approaches have been used to “resurrect” drugs thought previously to be ineffective, but subsequently found to work with in subset of patients. They can also be used for optimizing the doses of chemotherapy for particular patients.
