4 min1,83510:53 pmby Ryan Freeman

Pharmacogenomics is the study of how your genes affect your response to medication. For a more in-depth explanation about what pharmacogenomics is and how it works, go here.

Why is the study of pharmacogenomics so important? As one of the latest technologies in medicine, pharmacogenomics provides us with new scientific insights every day. There are many reasons why scientists, researchers, and physicians have been so excited about this blossoming scientific field. It’s time to dive into what pharmacogenomics brings to the table.

Pharmacogenomics and You: Get a closer look at why this science is so important.

1) Pharmacogenomics will contribute to smarter drug development.

The study of pharmacogenomics allows scientists to predict the efficacy of certain drugs, as well as their toxicity during clinical development. Through pharmacogenomics, the drug development process becomes more streamlined. First, it reduces the number of patients required to demonstrate clinical trial efficacy. And second, it allows scientists to rule out certain drugs from the get-go.

2) It makes prescribing medication safer and less expensive.

Doctors usually use the one-size-fits-all approach to prescribe medication. When used as a predictive tool, pharmacogenomics can determine which medications will cause you to react poorly. Your DNA can affect how well your body breaks down a drug and how fast you process it. Also, it directly influences whether or not you will experience adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to the drug.

With this information safely at their disposal, your doctor can pick prescriptions that are better suited for you. Furthermore, pharmacogenomics can lower the cost of medication. This is because you won’t have to spend money on medications that don’t work before finding ones that do.

Pharmacogenomics can prevent you from breaking the bank for your medications.

3) Your physician will have a more in-depth overview of your health.

Your doctor acts as the middleman between you and your health. The more available information your doctor has, the better he (or she) can evaluate you.

Pharmacogenomics provides your doctor a detailed roadmap to your genetics. Your doctor can then use this roadmap to determine everything about your health. For example, they can figure out what medicines will work best for you or whether you’re allergic to dairy. Additionally, they will be able to know what diseases you may be at risk of developing.

4) You can identify your hereditary risk for certain cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other conditions BEFORE you experience symptoms.

Pharmacogenomics can tell you if you’re at risk of developing hereditary diseases. This will open the door for many different actionable plans that could improve your future health, such as early testing. In fact, around 4% of patients have serious genetic risks that they could act on immediately if they had a way of knowing about them.

Your doctor will have a greater sense of your genetic background.

5) If you have children, your pharmacogenomic results could be beneficial for them too.

Your results can help identify your hereditary risk for serious conditions. Being aware of this risk could affect your children because they may inherit those genetic variants from you. Even if your children are now adults, they may benefit from this knowledge if they plan on having kids of their own. 

6) Pharmacogenomics can play a major role in developing new drug therapies for rare mendelian diseases, such as cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one of the most common hereditary diseases in the world. It tends to affect the lungs and digestive systems of those who have it. Also, people with the condition usually have a shorter life expectancy. A dysfunction of the CTFR protein that oversees traffic to the cell surface is what causes cystic fibrosis. When the CTFR protein is altered, those traffic channels are consequently affected, and cystic fibrosis develops.

A variant in the CTFR gene is responsible for changes in the CTFR protein, and pharmacogenomic screening helps detect that variant. Once detected, physicians can administer the drug Ivacaftor, which helps with CTFR protein function. Pharmacogenomics made this drug therapy possible. It has so far only been tested in clinical trials. However, the results are promising. Researchers foresee potentially widespread applicability in the future. 

We may be able to detect the gene variant for cystic fibrosis in the near future.

7) It can lower the number of cases of adverse drug reactions (ADRs).

ADRs are estimated to affect between 7 and 14 percent of all hospitalized patients. Researchers are always looking for new ways to optimize medical treatments in order to avoid ADRs. If you’ve never heard of them before, ADRs are actually the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and the sixth cause of death worldwide.

According to the Food and Drug Administration around 2 million people are hospitalized every year due to adverse drug reactions, and each year, they cause around 100,000 deaths. Pharmacogenomic testing will greatly reduce those numbers because it allows doctors to see the potential of each patient for having an ADR to a medication and avoid prescribing that medication.

Around 2 million people are hospitalized every year due to adverse drug reactions.

8) Finally, pharmacogenomics is pushing science forward every single day.

Through pharmacogenomic research, scientists continue to broaden their understanding of important genes and polymorphisms that influence human response to medication and more. Additionally, with continued incorporation of pharmacogenomics into clinical trials and routine checkups, our knowledge of the human genome’s role in our health can only increase.

Studies have shown that 89% of patients benefit from pharmacogenomic screening. And the number of pharmacogenomics applications continues to grow. Every day, scientists discover another way it can be utilized effectively for people around the world. Testing for gene variants may become more common in the near future.

Click here for more on the history of pharmacogenomics and how it grew into the hot scientific field it is today.

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