Date Published: March 31, 2017
Authors: Matthew Hirschtritt, MD, MPH, Aaron D. Besterman, MD, and David A. Ross, MD, PhD
Overview: Current standard of care in psychiatry involves prescribing psychotropic medications based on presence and severity of clinical symptoms and considerations of factors such as medical comorbidities and drug-drug interactions. Among these factors, the genetic contribution to medication response, broadly known as pharmacogenomics, is emerging as a relatively new and promising resource to guide the choice of medication type and dose. This field involves identifying individual differences in drug metabolism and response based on unique genetic variants, with the overarching goal of optimizing medication outcomes and reducing adverse side effects
Author Affiliations: Dr. Hirschtritt is a PGY3 resident in the Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Besterman is a child fellow at UCLA. Dr. Ross is the Assistant Professor and Associate Program Director at the Yale Adult Psychiatry Residency Program. Joseph Cooper, MD is the Contributing Editor for this publication. The National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative is a collaborative effort with AADPRT and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Council on Medical Education and Lifelong Learning and receives support from the NIH (R25 MH10107602S1) ©National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative.
