Pharmacogenetics brings together pharmacology and genetics, and is the study of the effect of inherited traits on pharmacology and toxicology. There is wide variability in the response to drugs between individuals and consequences of such variation may be therapeutic failure or an adverse drug reaction.
Inherited factors can affect the kinetics and dynamics of drugs.
This can include variation in drug-metabolising enzymes, drug transporters and drug receptors. Anthony Cox is the Adverse Drug Reaction pharmacist at the West Midlands Committee on Safety of Medicines Regional Monitoring Centre and a hospital pharmacist based at City Hospital, Birmingham. Pharmacogenomics is a newer discipline which recognises that genetic polymorphisms have the potential to affect a drug's action. Pharmacogenomic techniques allow analysis of risk factors to determine which genetic polymorphisms a person is carrying and to tailor drug therapy to their phenotype. In practice, however, the terms pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics are often used interchangeably.