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The Best Medications For Your Genes
blackbearnh writes "Until recently, physicians prescribed drugs to patients with dosages based only on weight, and with no idea if the drug would be effective for that particular person. But as this article on Forbes.com highlights, the same advances in genomics that are letting people know about their likelihood of getting certain diseases can also let doctors know what drugs, and what dosages, will be likely to do the most good. 'Tamoxifen, the much-heralded cancer-fighting drug, has been shown to have little benefit for 7% to 10% of patients taking it. In the past, we would have just said that it works 90% of the time. But now, with our new genomic knowledge under our belt, we can say that it works nearly 100% of the time for people with the 'right' version of the CYP2D6 gene, and 0% of the time for people with the 'wrong' version, who make up roughly 7% to 10% of the population.'"
getting denied health insurance for having bad genes
How about placebos? I suspect they might work much better on some people than others.
Very true. I have friends that think they're worthless. But I only have to take 4 of them (1 in each corner of the room, at 9:04am, without exhaling) and my OCD stays completely under control. They make a world of difference.
They should have used git for version control.
Well since Medical Insurers are exempt from anti-trust law, they have to DON'T compete AT ALL. Period. They can get away, legally, with things that would put the worst anti-trust abusers to shame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act
Hey man, there needs to be competition to foster new innovations in a...fairly static and sedentary industry.
I mean come on, competition exists in health care since one provides service A and the other provides...the exact same service.
Alright, someone tell me exactly how insurance companies compete with each other to foster new innovations. Hell, internet providers have at least newly developing tech for new, faster internets (although not so much in the US of A) but what can insurance companies do? Patent drugs or new procedures so only insurance provider A can provide it?
Are you joking or just really fucking dumb? The comptetition does exist -- but in medicine -- where there are innovations. In hospitals however there are protocols and rules. Doctors don't "invent" anything. Denying people healthcare because they cannot afford it does not foster new innovations -- it fosters death and diseases. Diseases which later on are mutated and spread on to you, simply because the people around you couldn't afford the bill. You have to be one dumb motherfucker to not get this -- really.
In other news, say what you want about republicans or democrats, but to fight against a public healthcare system without realising how self destructive that is takes one ignorant fucker. Unfortunately in a democratic system that ignorant fucker could eventually be responsible for the state of my health -- no matter how rich or poor I am.
I am the lawn!
The problem is, you are, like soooo many before you, confusing significant cultural influence with some sort of inborn genetic trait: >so far none have done very well in the 100m sprinting event So you are saying that there is some "karate gene" then? What gene makes Americans poor at soccer while great at Basketball? The point is, certain cultures value certain sports more than others, and thus those sports attract the pool of athletes from a certain country. >And great influence in other fields such as finance. You realize that Jews were basically *forced* to be bankers for a large part of history right? Tax and interest collection as seen as Taboo for Christians, so they made the jews do it. Same thing with science: if you can get run out of town at a moments notice, you tend to value learning and intelligence, as those are things that pack easily.
... Oh yes; Gattaca.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The FDA has had a table of valid genetic biomarkers for medications for several years now. While many of these are cancer drugs looking at specific metatabolic or receptor issues, our old friend warfarin (a "blood thinner" with a narrow therapeutic index, a reputation for causing a lot of trouble and a genomic profile that accounts for about half of the known variation in the drug) and the pain drug codeine are on that list as well. There's even a research website devoted to genetic calculation of warfarin dosing.
Carbamazepine (Tegretol) can cause a rare life-threatening reaction called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis), but it's mostly limited to individuals with a specific Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA-B*1502). Again, known for quite a while and a part of the basic biology of the drug.
It's a fairly well-written article, but it's kind of breathless about stuff that I was really excited about back in the '90's when my medical school teachers were really excited about it too. The best news is that the FDA has really stepped up in the past few years to make this actionable data that a practicing clinician can use.
I'm not going to argue about the mysterious information you have, since you don't go into details on it, but as the author of the article, I should tell you that it's part of the "O'Reilly Insights" series, not a straightline Forbes piece, and I very much was writing it from the perspective of "here's a significant piece of medical advancement that will affect us as individuals, and is also going to make drastic changes in the pharma industry.
You say that there aren't enough drugs that genetic variance makes a difference in, and it's all a big scam to get people's data. Personally, I think that major differences in the effectiveness of the leading breast cancer drug, and huge variance in the uptake of the most commonly prescribed blood thinner, are pretty significant, and I'm damn glad I know that I overmetabolize Coumadin, because I could very well be in an ER with a stroke some day.
We're just in the very earliest stages of looking at how genetic variation affects medicine, and once we start to build a larger database of fully sequenced individuals, I'm sure we'll find more and more cases of genome-influenced variability.
And for the record, I'm an applicant to the Personal Genome Project, which is about as public a distribution of genomic information as you can get, so I am certainly putting my money where my mouth is as far as choosing the benefits of greater knowledge over the fear of discrimination.