Pharmacogenomics of Antidepressants / 대한정신약물학회지

ABSTRACT

In an approach known as pharmacogenomics, many psychopharmacologists hope to match depressive patients to specific drugs based on the patients' genetic profiles. Many researchers and pharmaceutical companies are investing their efforts and vast amount of money in the pharmacogenomic aspects of many diseases. The numbers of pharmacogenomic reports are relatively small in the field of antidepressants because, in part, depressive disorders are multifactorial diseases with diversity of pathophysiology. In this review, the usefulness of therapeutic drug monitoring, phenotyping and genotyping of drug metabolizing enzymes before administration of antidepressants to depressive patients was discussed. Pharmacodynamic aspects of antidepressants, focused on the results of former studies about the relationship of the polymorphisms of the several genes (serotonin transporter genes, serotonin receptors, etc) and drug response, were also discussed.