A person’s environment, diet, and general state of health can all influence how he or she responds to medicines. But another key factor is genes. The study of how people respond differently to medicines due to their genetic inheritance is called pharmacogenetics. The term has been pieced together from the words pharmacology (the study of how drugs work in the body) and genetics (the study of how traits are inherited). An ultimate goal of pharmacogenetics is to understand how someone’s genetic make-up determines how well a medicine works in his or her body, as well as what side effects are likely to occur. In the future, advances gleaned from pharmacogenetics research will provide information to guide doctors in getting just enough of the right medicine to a person–the practice of “personalized medicine.”
Read more at: Dartmouth.edu
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