Pharmacogenomics of psychiatric drug treatment.

ABSTRACT

Clinical outcome to psychiatric drug therapy varies widely among patients. A significant proportion fail to respond satisfactorily, while others react adversely to these compounds. Multiple factors account for these inter-individual differences, however, the most significant contribution is the influence conferred by genetically inherited traits. Pharmacogenetics has been at the forefront of work to delineate this influence, by identifying polymorphisms within candidate genes involved in drug metabolism, neurotransmission and signal transduction that are important to the actions of these drugs. Progress in biomolecular technology has paved the way for pharmacogenomic strategies that examine this influence on a genomic level, and look set to perform the task of candidate gene identification more expeditiously. Microarray expression profiling is one particularly important pharmacogenomic development that has immense potential, and its use has already facilitated the identification of synaptic genes and other diverse candidates that appear relevant to the actions of these drugs. Knowledge from these studies will ultimately lead to the individualization of psychiatric drug treatment, while providing new insights into the etiology of these disorders and their future treatment.