Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences
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Personalized medicine is an emerging field with a goal of applying genomic information as a predictor of disease risk as well as individualization of drug therapy. For optimization of drug therapy, significant progress has been made in the past decade in linking genetic variation in genes associated with drug disposition to prediction of drug response and adverse reactions. For most drugs in clinical use, the interplay of many factors, including genetics, demographics, drug-drug interactions, disease states and the environment, result in the interindividual variability observed during drug therapy. ⋯ Similarly, HMG Co-A reductase inhibitors, commonly known as statins, also display wide interindividual variability in plasma concentration, response and toxicity due in part to polymorphisms in transporter genes, including SLCO1B1 and ABCG2. Genetic factors are also important considerations in treatment with other therapeutic agents discussed, including clopidogrel and tamoxifen. Implementation of personalized medicine-based treatment options for these and other drugs, the pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics of which are impacted by functional genetic variations, will require overcoming a number of challenges, including cost, turnaround time, and demonstration of clinical benefit, as well as better training of health care professionals about genomics in general, and pharmacogenomics in particular.