Here in the West, we live in a culture that loves its medicine—just turn on the TV and you’ll see a drug ad at nearly every commercial break. We’ve become so impatient for a cure to every symptom imaginable, and hope our doctor will just prescribe whatever’s been working for everyone else. But the reality is, even with the great strides we’ve made in pharmaceutics, there isn’t a pill for everything – including old age.
Dr. Linda Shell MA, RN
Polypharmacy, the prescribing of 5+ medications. Polypharmacy is a problem in America and stems from the drastically different reactions each of us can have when taking the same drug. It’s not a new issue—polypharmacy has been a silent killer for years, draining funds from Medicare and dismantling the treatment plans of millions as it becomes a habit ingrained in our culture, especially in eldercare. We’ve become resigned to the falsehood that more drugs mean better treatment, but there’s something putting an end to that.
It’s called
pharmacogenetics: the study of genetic differences in humans that affect how each person responds to drugs. Pharmacogenetics has been studied for over 30 years, but it’s practical applications become most widespread in the medical community in recent years. Identifying precisely which chemicals interact with which genes, medical professionals can map specific drugs to the DNA profiles of individual patients to find the prescription that will work best for them.
This mapping process is critical for patients being prescribed the most consequential and care-intensive classes of drugs, such as cardiovascular, chemotherapy, and neurological drugs. Without pharmacogenetics, doctors may be blindly trying several different drugs in these classes until one seems to work the best, greatly increasing the risk of an adverse drug effect. Not to mention, the circumstances of these drug uses are relatively urgent. Gene-to-drug mapping ensures that a patient is prescribed one that metabolizes at the right speed and delivers the intended effect, avoiding those risks and saving precious time in treatment.
In the long term, we hope to see pharmacogenetics take more of a priority in prescriptions of all drug types as we recognize the financial benefits of pharmacogenetics. Prescribing drugs that more effectively treat a patient’s conditions and the symptoms manifested by them cuts down on ordering multiple prescriptions. Additionally, a drug that achieves its purpose more quickly saves the time and money a less fitting drug would cost in continuing care.
If you were trying on a rock climbing harness in preparation for an ascent up a dangerous cliff, wouldn’t it be common sense to pick a harness that fits you specifically? That’s what pharmacogenetics is finally doing for the drug industry; it’s high time we minimize the risk we’ve been taking with prescription drugs and become intuitive in our medicating.
