Matching drugs to DNA is 'new era of medicine'
We have the technology to start a new era in medicine by precisely matching drugs to people's genetic code, a major report says.
Some drugs are completely ineffective or become deadly because of subtle differences in how our bodies function. The British Pharmacological Society and the Royal College of Physicians say a genetic test can predict how well drugs work in your body.
The tests could be available on the NHS next year.
It would have helped Jane Burns, from Liverpool, who lost two-thirds of her skin when she reacted badly to a new epilepsy drug.
She was put on to carbamazepine when she was 19. Two weeks later, she developed a rash and her parents took her to A&E when she had a raging fever and began hallucinating.
The skin damage started the next morning. Jane told the BBC: "I remember waking up and I was just covered in blisters, it was like something out of a horror film, it was like I'd been on fire."
Jane's experience may sound rare, but Prof Mark Caulfield, the president-elect of the British Pharmacological Society, said "99.5% of us have at least one change in our genome that, if we come across the wrong medicine, it will either not work or it will actually cause harm."
"We need to move away from 'one drug and one dose fits all' to a more personalised approach, where patients are given the right drug at the right dose to improve the effectiveness and safety of medicines," said Prof Sir Munir Pirmohamed, from the University of Liverpool.
Source: BBC News, 29 March 2022