Can a DNA test tell you which medicine is right for you?

Being able to adapt the treatment to each individual would be a big step forward for many health services, and there is a lot of talk about personalized medicine at the time. However, when it comes to using medications for mental disorders, opportunities are less than visionary moments.

During life, a self, family, or friends may enter a state where it may be necessary to use a neuroleptic. It may be an antidepressant in depression, a so-called mood stabilizing drug used in bipolar disorder, or an antipsychotic used in psychosis – for example hallucinations.

It is essential that these medications be used correctly, that is, correct rhythm for going up and down. In addition, it is important that the treatment be completed when it is no longer necessary. Like all medicines, neuroleptics can cause side effects. Side effects can occur early, that is, hours or days after the start of treatment. The doctor who prescribes such a drug should inform the person who will use the drug that the side effects may occur quickly and what side effects are most common for the medicine in question.

As a general rule, the side effects will be lessened, but it is a challenge that they come before the impact that we seek – the recovery of depression, the stabilization of the fluctuations of the Mood or the alleviation of annoying hallucinations. Thus, the person using the medication may find that the situation worsens before they improve. In this phase, it is very important not to be left to oneself but to have a good contact with the health system.

In recent years, there has been much talk of genes that can tell how a drug will work. just you. Will the medicine help you and you will be affected by the side effects? If one could know this before trying a drug, one would be able to choose the "right" medicine right away. Today, one must try two or more drugs before finding one that has a good effect and the least side effects.

Generation can affect how the medicine is treated in the body. By swallowing a tablet, the drug is taken from the intestine and transported to the liver. Here, the drug will be converted so that it can eventually be excreted through the urine. The rate at which this occurs depends in part on inherited genetic variables. In the same way that you inherit genetic variants that help determine the color of your hair, you inherit genetic variables for how quickly the liver does the "job" of transforming drugs.

Some people quickly turn on the drug The body and one do not get such high levels of drugs in the body. In others, the conversion is slow, so that they get high levels of medication. However, most people fall into an intermediate category. In addition, there are many other factors that affect the importance of genes. It may be diet, the use of other drugs, smoking or causes that are still unknown to us.

In addition, many studies have been done to determine whether different people can have genetic variables that seem more or less effective. they should work, namely in the brain. It may be thought that the response to treatment varies from person to person because of gene differences. Here, however, the research has yielded uncertain and partly contradictory results up to here.

Today, the drug is nowadays used several times if several neuroleptics have been tried without affecting the symptoms. Then you can extract DNA from a blood or saliva test and examine how the drugs are converted into the body. It has not been common to use genetic tests before starting to select drugs.

Today, there are commercial players, mainly abroad, who offer products that they believe can help to choose the right medicine for you. The idea is to use such tests before starting a medication. You submit a test and get a report indicating which drugs should be preferred.

Providers of such services promise more than they can contain. Although tests are marketed in the form of extensive mapping of different genes, providers must make choices in the genetic variables that they want to study. These choices are probably based on research, but many genetic variables that could be tested must necessarily be chosen. In addition, independent reviews indicate that the interpretation of the results may vary from one supplier to the other. In other words, although two different companies find the same variant, they will give different answers to what it means for the one who ordered the sample.

Overall, it is too early to say that genetic testing is a useful tool. Consider starting with a medication within antidepressant groups, mood stabilizers or antipsychotics. There are too many unknowns about the meaning of genes. In addition, there are many other things that genes play in the way drugs work on us. Starting a moderate dose, knowing that side effects may occur but can also exceed and knowing that it takes time to know if the drug helps, is more important.