Curious About PGx?
What is PGx?
Pharmacogenomics, or PGx, is the study of how medications work in our bodies based on our genetic makeup.
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
- Patients with cancer that could benefit from targeted therapy agents
- EGFR
- BRAF
- HER2
- Patients taking clopidogrel
- 30% of the general population is unable to convert clopidogrel to its active form due to variants in the CYP2C19 gene
- Patients taking warfarin for anticoagulation (CYP2C9 and VKORC1)
- Patients taking statin medications with muscle aches (SLC01B1)
- Patients on HIV therapy, particularly abacavir
- To reduce the number of medications for patients (polypharmacy)
- Patients taking opioid medications (OPRM1)
- Patients requiring attention deficit disorder (ADD) medications (D4D4)
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 mouth 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.
Who qualifies for PGx?
- Commercial insurance may cover testing for patients who are experiencing adverse drug reactions or lack or response to medications (especially psychiatric medications), pain management (opioid therapy), cancer management (targeted therapy) and management of other conditions.
- Medicare will cover patients who are initiating amitriptyline or nortriptyline for depressive disorders, clopidogrel for patients who have acute coronary syndrome undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.
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