ABSTRACT
Pharmacogenetics is the study of the role that inheritance plays in the individual variation in drug response. The response spectrum of a drug may range from life-threatening adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to inadequate therapeutic effects. For the clinician, this concept is relevant when asking why a drug is expectedly effi cacious in one segment of the population, ineffective for another, and toxic or even fatal for a third. Identifi cation of genetic variations that result in differences in drug bioavailability, biotransformation and, ultimately, clinical response is the key to the new era of “personalized medicine.” Personalized medicine promises to deliver safer, more effective therapies to patients by down-playing the one-drug-fi ts-all theory, in exchange for recognizing the impact of a person’s specifi c genetic make-up on the pharmacodynamics (PD) and pharmacokinetics (PK) of a specifi c drug, and integrating this information to develop a personalized therapeutic plan (1).
