The Role of Pharmacogenomics in Improving the Management of Asthma

Abstract

There is a large amount of interindividual variability in both therapeutic and adverse responses to asthma therapies. Genetic variability may account for 50–60% of this variability. Pharmacogenomics holds out the promise of allowing clinicians to prospectively choose therapies that have the greatest likelihood to be effective for individual patients and to avoid those which may have a high likelihood of producing adverse effects. In this article we review the principals of pharmacogenomic investigation. We explore the data developed from the early pharmacogenomic studies with the most common asthma therapies. Further, we explore the potential use of pharmacogenomics and caveats in interpreting such information.