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I recently had the opportunity to talk to Christie Kunde. She is a Doctor of Pharmacy and the owner of CK Clinical Kare Consultants. She works with people to ensure their medications are working well based on their DNA. I was shocked to learn that over time, medications can lose their effectiveness as we age. Prescriptions that worked well when first prescribed, could have negative effects on our health years down the road!  Considering that about 66% of all adults in the USA use prescription drugs, the impact on our health system can be devastating.

I asked Christie to give us some insights into her field of pharmacogenomics and how she helps people who are taking prescriptions drugs.

What is Pharmacogenomics (PGx)?

Pharmacogenomics is an important example of the field of precision medicine, which aims to tailor medical treatment to each person or to a group of people. This is a contrast to the one size fits all approach of traditional medicine.

Pharmacogenomics looks at how your DNA affects the way you respond to drugs. In some cases, your DNA can affect whether you have a bad reaction to a drug or whether a drug helps you or has no effect. Pharmacogenomics can improve your health by helping you know ahead of time whether a drug is likely to benefit you and be safe for you to take. Knowing this information can help your doctor find the medicine that will work best for you. Pharmacogenomics has been shown to decrease medication side effects, trial and error prescribing, number of medications needed, doctor visits, hospitalizations, and ER visits.

How does pharmacogenomics work?

Drugs interact with your body in numerous ways, depending on both how you take the drug and where the drug acts in your body. After you take a drug, your body needs to break it down and get it to the intended area. Your DNA can affect multiple steps in this process to influence how you respond to the drug.

Drug Breakdown: Your DNA can affect how quickly your body breaks down (metabolizes) a drug. If you break the drug down more quickly than most people, your body gets rid of the drug faster and you might need more of the drug or a different one. If your body breaks the medication down more slowly, you might need less of the it.

Drug Receptors: Some drugs need to attach to proteins on the surface of cells called receptors to work properly. Your DNA determines what type of receptors you have and how many, which can affect your response to the medication, affecting the dosage required by your body.

Drug Uptake: Some drugs need to be actively taken into the tissues and cells in which they act. Your DNA can affect this process. Decreased uptake can mean that the drug does not work as well and can cause it to build up in other parts of your body, which can cause problems. Your DNA can also affect how quickly some drugs are removed from the cells in which they act. If drugs are removed from the cell too quickly, they might not have time to act.

Why is pharmacogenomics important?

Adverse drug reactions are the 4th leading cause of death. And close to 400 medications can be affected by your unique DNA causing them to either not work or cause side effects. Many of these include mental health, pain, and heart medications. Over 60% of people are taking at least one medication that has the potential to interact with their DNA.

How the body responds to the medications is very complicated. Pharmacogenomics is just one piece of the puzzle. Aside from your unique DNA, there are numerous factors that can impact how you may respond to medications including your health, age, other medications and supplements you take, the foods you eat, and other lifestyle factors.

Christie Kunde is a consultant pharmacist and owner of CK Clinical Kare Consulting. She provides comprehensive medication consultations. She helps people improve their health by figuring out which medications will work best for them and be safe to take based on their unique DNA, other medications they are taking, and their lifestyle factors. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Christie Kunde at 559-307-8653 or by email at [email protected]