Outcomes for Psychiatry Patients Improve with Pharmacogenetics

Studies  from The Neuropsychiatric Clinic, Carolina Partners, Raleigh, NC show that depression and psychosis have low success rates with the initial selected medication. In fact, the initial medication typically achieves meaningful response in 40% or less of patients.

Now, precision medicine offers a tool to help enhance the success rate. Many psychiatric medications have specific verbiage on their label highlighting information regarding genetic variants that alter activity.  With pharmacogenetics, physicians will now know scientifically which medications can give a patient appropriate therapy, and which ones won’t.

Studies found that psychiatric symptoms improved significantly more for patients with pharmaogenetic testing compared to those that were not tested.  The study provided the treating physician with information regarding how the biology and genetics of individual patients was likely to influence the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of commonly used psychotropic medications and classes of medication. The treating physician then incorporated this information into his personalized treatment plan for each individual patient.