When prescribing medications, it is important that healthcare providers be aware of any potential risks a drug may pose to a patient. Pharmacogenomics (PGx) is the field of study that informs how a person’s genetic makeup affects their response to medications. This field is an important part of precision medicine and tools like VarSeq PGx (VSPGx) enable clinicians to use patients’ sequencing data to comprehensively assess drug risk and safety, ensuring that patients receive the most appropriate treatments.
Imagine a patient who is battling with depression and has not been responding well to the medications that have been tried thus far. Their doctor recommends pharmacogenomic testing to be done and the patient agrees to get their genome sequenced. The next drug that the doctor was planning to recommend was sertraline. The doctor also discovered that the patient has developed high cholesterol and would like to add simvastatin to their list of medications to take. To analyze their sequencing data for pharmacogenomic insights, this patient’s care team turns to VarSeq PGx to assess the patient’s profile and identify any potential risks.
After the analysis was completed in VarSeq, a report was sent to the patient’s doctor, indicating that the patient was a poor metabolizer for the CYP2C19 enzyme, which plays a key role in metabolizing sertraline, but a normal metabolizer with respect to another sertraline metabolizing enzyme CYP2B6 (Figure 2). This indicates an intermediate risk for adverse reactions when taking sertraline. Given this result, her doctor may consider an alternative antidepressant or adjust the dosage carefully. The report also reassures that the individual is not predicted to have an adverse reaction to simvastatin for the treatment of high cholesterol.
VarSeq PGx not only provides recommendations regarding the patient’s current medication list—it also provides a comprehensive report of all the potential drug-gene interactions that this patient could have based on their genetic makeup inferred from their genomic sequence data. This report includes prescribing recommendations that should prove useful throughout the patient’s lifetime.
VarSeq PGx offers clinically actionable recommendations by evaluating an individual’s pharmacogenomic diplotypes and phenotypes against known drug interactions. This enables clinicians to prescribe medications with genetic compatibility in mind, identify potential adverse drug reactions before they happen, and develop safer and more effective treatment plans for their patients.
By using tools like VarSeq PGx, healthcare providers can make more informed decisions about their patients’ medical care. To find out more about our VSPGx solution for pharmacogenomics analysis, please contact us at [email protected].