The Bottom Line, continued

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The Bottom Line, continued

By knowing a patient's disposition to specific drugs, the physician should be able to start the patient on an appropriate regimen rather than perfecting treatment based on trial and error. Drugs whose metabolism may prove to be problematic can be avoided, and second-line therapies that are metabolized by different, unaffected enzymes can be chosen.

Clinical chemists, pharmacologists, and physicians need to translate knowledge of CYP450 polymorphisms into clinically-validated treatment algorithms. It remains to be seen whether PGx testing will become more widespread. Currently, its clinical utility has been questioned in light of rising healthcare costs and the ever-increasing financial burdens of patients.
Dosing recommendations for PM, EM, IM and UM patients are beginning to appear in the literature for various classes of drugs, and the FDA is encouraging the incorporation of pharmacogenomic testing in the development process for new drugs.