Pharmacology - Respiratory

Pharmacogenetics of asthma.

Hall IP, 2006. Chest 130(6):1873-78.

Pharmacogenetics offers the potential to optimize treatment for individual patients by using genetic information to improve efficacy or avoid side effects. While there are a number of examples in which the approach is already in routine clinical usage, exploitation of this approach in asthma is still under development. A number of examples of possible pharmacogenetic approaches that may prove of value in the management of asthma are discussed.

Journal Link | PMID

Overview of the pharmacogenetics of asthma treatment.

Weiss ST et al. 2006. Pharmacogenomics J. 6(5):311-26.

Asthma affects approximately 300 million individuals worldwide. Medications comprise a substantial portion of asthma expenditures. Despite the availability of three primary therapeutic classes of medications, there are a significant number of nonresponders to therapy. Available data, as well as previous pharmacogenetic studies, suggest that genetics may contribute as much as 60-80% to the interindividual variability in treatment response. In this methodologic review, after providing a broad overview of the asthma pharmacogenetics literature to date, we describe the application of a novel family-based screening algorithm to the analysis of pharmacogenetic data and highlight our approach to identifying and verifying loci influencing asthma treatment response. This approach seeks to address issues related to multiple comparisons, statistical power, population stratification, and failure to replicate from which previous population-based or case-control pharmacogenetic association studies may suffer. Identification of such replicable loci is the next step towards the goal of 'individualized therapy' for asthma.

Journal Link: Available at Nature | PMID

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