Don't blame the drug, says Wendell Weber, M.D., Ph.D., a medical geneticist at the University of Michigan Medical School. The real problem is likely to be your genes.
Genetic diversity is a major contributor to variations in human drug response.
A pioneer in the field of pharmacogenetics, Weber devoted his career to studying how small genetic mutations called polymorphisms can lead to big differences in how people respond to drugs or environmental chemicals. The same drug that helps one individual may have no affect, or even harm, someone else. As the Human Genome Project nears completion, pharmacogenetics is getting a lot of attention, because it could make it possible for physicians to prescribe safer and more effective drugs and therapies tailored to each patient's unique genetic code. He also discussed the emergence of a related field called pharmacogenomics, which analyzes all the polymorphisms in the entire genome. Fortunately, only a limited number affect how people react to drugs or environmental substances.