Pharmacogenetic Advances in Cardiovascular Medicine: Relevance to Personalized Medicine

Abstract

The field of pharmacogenetics aims to more fully delineate the genetic basis of interindividual variation in pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and adverse drug reactions. Indeed, remarkable progress has been made in the past decade, so that we now have a far greater appreciation for the genetic contribution to observed variation in drug responsiveness. We are now starting to witness the translation of findings observed in pharmacogenetic studies to their implementation for patient care as personalized medicine, where an individual patient’s genetic makeup is used to guide drug selection and dosing. Many widely utilized cardiovascular drugs have now been linked to commonly occurring heritable genetic variations referred to as single nucleotide polymorphisms to variation in observed efficacy as well as risk for toxicity. As such, the current report outlines clinically relevant evidence supporting the important role of pharmacogenetics to the treatment of patients with cardiovascular disease.