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DNA Drug Reaction Testing. CYP2D6, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP1A2. Drug Reaction Test. A DNA Drug Reaction Test for variations in CYP2D6, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP1A2 can help predict side effects. Drug Reaction Testing I have received several reports back now from people that have taken the Drug Reaction Test and the reports are all showing that they should have never been put on a specific medication or the dosage that are being prescribed is way too high for their metabolism to handle. If you want to keep taking psychoactive medication you owe it to yourself to know which one will be less inclined to cause you the severe side effects. Read Psychiatric Times Article June 2005 - Advances in Pharmacogenomics Reduce Side Effects and Save Lives Click Here “Physicians can use the genetic information from this test to prevent harmful drug interactions and to assure drugs are used optimally, which in some cases will enable patients to avoid less effective or potentially harmful treatment choices,” said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, Acting FDA Commissioner. News story just released on the Drug Reaction Test as well, January 25, 2005. Click here to read. (Opens new Browser window) The adverse drug reactions can be stopped or predicted. Prediction is defined in the Webster's dictionary - "to declare in advance." The Mayo Clinic is now offering the Drug Reaction Test as well. "At this point in time, the test really can't tell you what drug will work," said Dr. David Mrazek, Mayo's chief of psychiatry, who has led the charge for genetic testing. But "it will identify drugs that don't work." And that, he says, can help reduce side effects and failure rates. Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, predicted that tests like this will spread fast. "Do not be surprised," he told a conference of family physicians, "if in the next year or two, this kind of DNA testing will be considered as a necessary step before writing a prescription." Two in four people who walk out of the doctor's office with a prescription may be headed for trouble from an adverse drug event. And a new study suggests that more than a third of those unwanted and potentially dangerous side effects could have been prevented with better prescribing practices and doctor-patient communication. The study, published in the April 17 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, examined adverse drug events reported among 661 patients who received at least one prescription drug from four primary care clinics in the Boston area. Researchers found that 162 of these patients (25%) reported an adverse drug event for a total of 181 adverse drug events. Thirteen percent of the adverse drug events were serious, and 11% were considered preventable. Serious reactions in this study included drops in heart rate, drops in blood pressure, or bleeding from the stomach or intestines. But the study found that the severity and duration of many of the adverse drug events reported would have been substantially reduced if different actions had been taken. Researchers say these ameliorable events occurred when doctors failed to respond to drug-related symptoms and when patients failed to inform doctors about these symptoms. Part of the problem of a patient informing the physician of a drug adverse reaction is knowing it a drug reaction in the first place. The American Medical Association has already determined the value of this test with anticoagulation medication. If a person has a variation in one specific gene, they may bleed internally. A physician, armed with this information can "predict" and know what dosage to prescribe up front and also know if the person needs to watched very close during the initial stages of treatment. Psychiatric medications are no different. Cancer medications are no different. Your physician and you can know in advance how you will respond or not, to a specific medication. This includes how you will respond to a specific dosage. Pharmaceutical firms use this test during phase I, II and phase III of clinical trials. They screen people out of their trials using this type of test because they do know the chance of an adverse reaction for specific populations are at risk. It is not until phase IV of clinical trials do they allow a random selection of the population to be part of the trials. However, when the pharmaceutical writes their final drug description and side effect profile, they include the percentage of people with a variant gene in the final analysis. 15% of the population are poor metabolizers of antidepressants. 35% can't even metabolize the drugs. This is due to a gene variant. 15% of the population are ultra metabolizers and a medication will simply pass through their liver but that can cause a totally different type of side effect. If you are thinking of starting a medication, and you want prediction, the Drug Reaction Test is a must. Read through the Physician information to gain further understanding of this test. You can be tested for these pathways now.
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