Personalised approaches to pharmacotherapy for schizophrenia [Articles]

The traditional approach to selecting antipsychotic medication involves little more than trial and error. Recent advances in genetics and molecular science offer the hope of a ‘personalised medicine’ approach to antipsychotic development and prescribing in schizophrenia. Personalised medicine is the practice of tailoring medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient. In schizophrenia, this will involve the identification of more homogeneous subsets of patients through the application of genetics, epigenetics, proteomics and metabolomics, neuroimaging and other biomarkers, and the use of these findings to stratify patients according to their response to treatment. In this article, we focus on the emerging evidence in pharmacogenetics and biomarkers for assessing individual response and tolerability of antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia.

Source: Advances in Psychiatric Treatment - March 1, 2016 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Lally, J., MacCabe, J. H. Tags: Articles Source Type: research