, Mood Disorders Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, Texas, USA. Daly Ella J., Mood Disorders Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, Texas, USA.
selleckchem Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, current pharmacological practices largely ignore or minimize individual Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and cross-group variations, which often are extremely sizable. Textbooks and package inserts provided by pharmaceutical

companies give a fairly narrow range for dosing recommendations. Consequently, medications prescribed in the clinical setting are way too little for some, and grossly excessive for others. There are also currently no rational guidelines for choosing one class or type of medication over the other

(eg, selective serotonin uptake inhibitors [SSRIs] vs others). This approach of “one size fits all” is often the reason for poor Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical treatment response, noncompliance, severe adverse effects, unnecessary hospitalization, and even mortality. Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics (PG) hold great potential for addressing these issues. In fact, while the field continues to progress with lightning speed, with much more valuable information Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical still forthcoming, a great deal is already known about factors governing both the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of many drugs, and the technology is largely there to put these into clinical use. A number of major obstacles are likely

responsible for this apparent discrepancy between the progress of PG on the one hand, and its clinical application on the other. These include (i) feasibility of incorporating PG input, into clinical Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical decision-making, which might, be termed clinical pharmacogenomics (CPG), and the impact of such an approach on clinical outcome; (ii) complexity and apparent “overabundance” of PG information vis-à-vis drug response; (iii) inherent “inertia” hindering Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the “diffusion of innovation,” and the need for incorporating PG approaches into medical education; (iv) problems related to the “economy of scale;” and financial support for new approaches. In the following article, we will briefly review Dipeptidyl peptidase the literature suggesting that CPG is feasible and clinically relevant, and that depressed subjects treated with the CPG approach will show significantly fewer side effects (greater tolerability), greater treatment adherence, better clinical outcome, and a lower rate of relapse. Such data should be encouraging for medical educators and policymakers in moving forward with the broad adaptation of CPG as part of the standard of care, and the realization of the goals of what, have been generally called “individualized” or “personalized” medicine. The prevalence and impact of clinical depression Extensive clinical and epidemiological data, accumulated over the past several decades, consistently indicate that clinically significant depression is a highly prevalent condition.