Pharmacogenetics and treatment-resistant schizophrenia

Abstract

It should not be lost on our field that the therapeutics of oncology has been transformed by the incorporation of genetic information into drug selection as well as the evaluation of efficacy and adverse effects for each individual treatment. There is accumulating evidence that genetic polymorphisms of several neurotransmitters related to schizophrenia can be useful in predicting both treatment response and propensity to experience side effects during the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Believing that more severe, refractory schizophrenia might constitute a patient subgroup of some distinct neurobiological signature(s), the evolution of pharmacogenetic studies into clinical practice would be a real advance to clinicians who inevitably today struggle with “trial-and-error” pharmacologic strategies.