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Tests are now available to determine whether individual patients will benefit from certain drugs, with the goals of physicians no longer needing to rely on "trial and error" prescribing.
"This seems to be something that patients understand and gravitate toward more than just about anything. They like the idea of having drugs that work that don't make them sick," says Ellen Wright Clayton, MD, JD, Craig-Weaver Professor of Pediatrics and professor of law at Vanderbilt University's Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society in Nashville, TN.
Vanderbilt's Pharmocogenic Resource for Enhanced Decisions in Care and Treatment (PREDICT) program, launched in 2010, has genotyped more than 14,000 Vanderbilt patients for 184 different genetic variations that affect the body's response to various drugs.
More than 12,000 of the patients (88%) have genetic variations that increase their risk of adverse effects from one or more of the five drugs currently included in the electronic health record. Here are some ethical considerations with pharmacogenomics:
* Whether there is an evidence base to show that the testing is really going to make a difference. "This is an ongoing...