Individualized Medication Guidance Based on Pharmacogenomics

Abstract

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a challenge in modern healthcare, particularly due to the increasing complexity of therapeutics, more and more ageing population, and the rising of multimorbidity. Adverse drug reactions are a significant cause of hospitalizations and deaths worldwide. It’s estimated that about 1/3 of the patients’ death each year worldwide were caused by unreasonable medications. Statistical data show that, in China, about 2.5 million patients were hospitalized each year due to adverse drug reactions, approximately 200,000 people died directly because of unreasonable medication. The incidence of adverse drug reactions in adults is $6.9\%$, in children this rate is $12.9\%$, and in newborns this rate is as high as $24.4\%$. Unreasonable medications happened frequently to newborns, because they are easy to have greater impacts on children, the younger the children are, the more serious the adverse drug reactions are. Therefore, it’s very important to find solutions to avoid ADRs occurring to reduce the risk of their harm to patients. Pharmacogenomics is the study of how genes affect a person’s response to drugs, therefore, in this paper, based on pharmacogenomics, we established a system to provide individualized medication guidance including dosage recommendations, or withdrawal of the drugs.