Sunday, November 15, 2009

Pharmacogenomics: The promise of personalized medicine. http://www.aapsj.org/articles/ps0201/ps020104/ps020104.pdf

With the development of pharmacogenomics, it is being understood that many genes play a role in drug response and toxicity, which may differ in each patient. Therefore, there is a massive complexity in identifying candidate genes.
How will this affect health care professionals? There is obviuously going to be need to implement new educational tools to properly educate our health care professionals with the complexity of personalized medicine.
In the past, the cliche was: "one drug fits all". This is obviously changing with new developments nearly every day. With the one drug fits all, some patients experience symtom relief while others may not, or may experience worsening symptoms, due to the individuality of their molecular profiles. The development of pharmacogenomics will indeed affect the development of blockbuster drugs, or drugs that have made billions of dollars for treating a certain disease or condition for billions of people. But in reality, these drugs will affect everyone differently. For example, look at anti-depressant drugs and the history of suicidal symptoms associated with them. These type of dilemmas should disappear with pharmacogenomics.
The article also addresses the many different receptors and other protein markers that exist with many potential SNP's within each.
What type of privacy issues will be associated with these molecular profiles? Who will have access to them besides our health care professionals and doctors. What about sports and athletic issues? There could be major debate here as well.

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