Personalized medicine and pharmacogenomicsPharmacogenomics holds the promise that drugs might one day be tailored to your genetic makeup.
By Mayo Clinic Staff
Modern medications save millions of lives a year. Yet any one medication might not work for you, even if it works for other people. Or it might cause severe side effects for you but not for someone else.
Your age, lifestyle and health all influence your response to medications. But so do your genes. Scientists are working to match specific gene variations with responses to particular medications.
With that information, doctors can tailor treatments to individuals. That's what pharmacogenomics is all about. Part of a new field called personalized medicine, pharmacogenomics offers the promise of predicting whether a medication is likely to help or hurt you before you ever take it.
Pharmacogenomics in action
Imagine you've had a heart attack and your doctor wants to give you medication to lower your risk of having another. Taking into account such factors as your weight, age and medical history, your doctor might prescribe a blood-thinning drug to help prevent blood clots from causing another heart attack.
Without testing, neither you nor your doctor knows exactly how you'll react to the medication. It may not work for you, or you may have serious side effects such as bleeding. You might have to try different doses — or even different medications — before finding a treatment that works for you.
Pharmacogenomics speeds up that process. Before you take a single dose of medication, you can have a test to see how you're likely to respond to the medication. With that information, your doctor can tailor the dose or avoid that drug entirely and prescribe a different one.
Jul. 14, 2012
See more In-depth
- Pharmacogenomics. Human Genome Project. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/medicine/pharma.shtml. Accessed May 4, 2012.
- Scott SA. Personalizing medicine with clinical pharmacogenetics. Genetics in Medicine. 2011;13:987.
- Campos-Outcalt D. Personalized medicine: The promise, the reality. The Journal of Family Practice. 2007;56:621.
- Wang L, et al. Genomics and drug response. New England Journal of Medicine. 2011;364:1144.
- Plavix (prescribing information). Bridgewater, N.J.: Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals; 2011. http://products.sanofi.us/plavix/plavix.html. Accessed May 4, 2012.