What is PGx?
Pharmacogenomics, or PGx, is the study of how a personā€™s genetics influence how they respond to medications.
Each person has a different code and different genome, which means each person has different responses to medications - pharmacogenomics takes some of the guesswork out of choosing medications for patients by looking at their gene profiles and deciphering how medications will be processed.
Who can benefit from PGx?
- Patients who have not had an adequate response or treatment failure to psychiatric medications
(varies by lab and may include CYP1A2, CYP2B6, CYP2C19, CYP2C9, CYP2D6, CYP3A4, UGT1A4, UGT2B15) - Patients with cancer that could benefit from targeted therapy agents (EGFR, BRAF, HER2)
- Patients taking clopidogrel (CYP2C19)
- Patients taking warfarin for anticoagulation (CYP2C9 and VKORC1)
- Patients taking statin medications with muscle aches (SLC01B1)
- Patients on HIV therapy, particularly abacavir (HLA-B)
How is PGx done?
- A provider will write a prescription for the pharmacogenomic test.
- The sample for testing is typically collected using a cheek cell sample via cheek swab.
- Once the sample is collected, it will be sent to a pharmacogenomic lab to be processed.
- Also collected using a blood sample.
- Your healthcare provider will send in the sample to the lab to have your results interpreted. They will provide a report back to you that will be explained by your healthcare provider.