by Jennifer Abbasi
What if there were a way to know if a depressed patient would respond to an antidepressant—before it was prescribed? Or to predict a bleeding event from an antiplatelet therapy? In recent years, advances in genetic testing have made such drug-response predictions possible for patients with certain gene variants. But physician adoption is moving slowly, say experts in the growing field of pharmacogenomics.
“While we’ve made tremendous rapid advances in terms of basic science and technological advances, and [while] clinical outcomes [are] there for some gene-drug pairs, clinical implementation unfortunately has been lagging behind,” said Edith A. Nutescu, PharmD, MS CTS, associate professor and director of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomic Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy.
