With the increasing need for personalized medicine, pharmacists are beginning to embrace pharmacogenetics.  And with continued education, they will have the capacity to improve patients’ lives.

The age of pharmacogenetics has arrived. Pharmacists are taking notice and using this information to help determine which patients require specific treatments, to guide dosage selection, and to predict how patients will respond to therapy.

“After decades of research, pharmacogenetics is moving from research into routine clinical practice,” said James Hoffman, PharmD, MS, BCPS, medication outcomes and safety officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “Pharmacists can help lead the way.”

Dr. Hoffman spoke about how pharmacists can better harness the power of pharmacogenetics at the American Pharmacists Association Annual Meeting and Exposition in Los Angeles, California.

He pointed out that more than 100 drug labels now provide pharmacogenetic information, and the US Food and Drug Administration uses genetic information in safety warnings, such as the recent boxed warning for codeine use in children.

Genetic tests are not being used as much as they could be to help decide on drugs and doses, Dr. Hoffman explained. However, the fact that we can now “genotype 225 genes relevant to drug metabolism for the cost of 1 or 2 single gene tests” will likely lead to increased use, he noted.

The first step to increasing pharmacist involvement in pharmacogenetics is to reduce existing knowledge gaps. “There is a need for more active learning experiences, such as continuing education and continuing professional development, to demonstrate the utility of pharmacogenetic principles in a variety of disciplines,” she said. “It was not surprising to discover in my preliminary results that only 9% of respondents had completed any continuing education related to pharmacogenetics.” Pharmacists who want to be more involved, and even those who are unsure, need to actively seek out educational experiences.

Pharmacists with access to pharmacogenetic information should use it when recommending changes to a patient’s drug therapy. “Many community pharmacists were able to identify the appropriate tests required for various drugs, but the majority struggled with modifying drug regimens when provided with pharmacogenetic data,” Dr. Ammons explained. Increased documentation is essential to provide pharmacists and other healthcare providers with a foundation for the application of such information.

Both Dr. Ammons and Dr. Hoffman point out that education and collaboration are critical to getting pharmacists involved in pharmacogenetics. With more knowledge, they will have the capacity to improve patients’ lives.

Read entire article at Medscape.com