According to a research conducted over 20 years by Dr. Collin Campbell and his colleagues in the Department of Medicine at the University of Rochester, the cause of death due to errors in medical care ranks the third preceded by cardiology and cancer. In the United States alone, errors in diagnostics, surgery, prescriptions, and drug side effects kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. Of these errors, drug side effects are the leading cause. Even though patients take the approved drugs and take them as prescribed, hundreds of thousands of people each year die from unwanted reactions from drugs that would otherwise restore health. surname. According to a summary of 39 studies of the American Medical Association, nearly 7% of patients suffer serious health impacts due to drug’s side effects. Among them, many cases required prolonged treatment in hospital, permanent paralysis, or death. This is only a survey of people taking the medicine exactly as prescribed. In Vietnam, most drugs are sold over the counter without prescription, and the abuse of traditional medicines and functional foods has resulted in an increasing rate of people with ADR.
The response to drugs is influenced not only by clinical and environmental factors, but also by the patient’s genetics. Genetic alterations in drug metabolic enzymes, drug delivery systems and drug targets can lead to severe poisoning. Pharmacogenomics (PGx) is a field of study that focuses on discovering genetic variations that affect drug responses, which can then be used to identify people at high risk of ADR. The search for genetic markers is usually conducted using a case study design. DNA samples were collected from both cases (patients with ADR) and controls (patients taking the same drug without ADR), and the frequencies of genetic variants were compared between the two groups. Any genetic markers observed at a higher frequency in cases than controls are an indication of potential risk.
Studies in this project aim to answer the questions “Why do some drugs work so well for one group of patients, but don’t work, or even harm others? When should a doctor need to change the dosage or stop taking certain medications? How do I know if some drugs may have an adverse effect on a patient before prescribing it?” These types of questions can be answered by studying how genes affect the body’s response to drugs. The goal of the project is to develop tools for PGx testing, also known as drug genetic testing, as a basis for guiding doctors on how to adjust prescriptions (alter or increase or decrease dosage) based on the genomic characteristics of each individual. This is the key to precision medicine for the Vietnamese community.
