Pharmacogenetics: Know how drugs affect you

One of the blocks that we have recently added to our platform is that of the pharmacogenetics. It is the biological discipline in charge of study the effect of genetic variability of an individual in his response to certain medications.

We are not all the same

Not all of us respond the same to medications. Our genetics can determine how effective is a drug in our body or if your side effects they may be older.

Medicines today constitute one of the main causes of adverse reactions. This is because a certain homogeneity in patients, and therefore that the effective and well-tolerated drugs in some will also be so in the rest.

But nothing is further from the truth, the truth is that they exist people who tolerate a medicine worse or what the efficiency of this is very low in your body. This happens because we are not a homogeneous group, we present a certain genetic variability that will affect how our body processes these drugs.

Genetics are not the only ones in the game

Although genetics will play a fundamental role, it is not the only participant. Exogenous factors as the diet or endogenous as the age you will access to: sex they will be decisive when it comes to having greater or lesser tolerance or efficacy to a certain drug.

As for the genetic part, they are the SNPs or polymorphisms are responsible for determining the outcome. They are changes in a single DNA base that create a gene variant that is more or less effective in processing a drug..

Drug tolerance

When it comes to tolerance versus a certain drug is usually enzymes in charge of metabolize it and avoid like this toxicity. If your gene variant for this enzyme produces a low drug metabolism efficiency, this will result in a increased toxicity. Thus, the drug molecule will not be expelled from the body quickly, and this toxicity can lead to side effects such as diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding, etc.

Drug efficacy

Instead when it comes to effectiveness of a drug, these are gene variants that affect the drug molecule targets. If the gene variant produces a “more suitable target” the drug will have a greater effect on your body, and therefore you will need less doses to achieve the same effect. On the contrary, if your “target is not so suitable” you will need more of drug to obtain the same effect, of course, you should know your tolerance to it since you could have toxic effects for a high dose.

Always check with your doctor