BIO200H5 Lecture 18: lec 18.docx
Document Summary
Variability iv: genetics and drug biotransformation (chapter 10) Pharmacogenetics: the study of the influence of heredity on the response of drugs or on their fate in the body. A thorough understanding of pharmacogenetics is important for: prediction and identification of abnormal drug responses, understanding normal drug responses, efficient drug design (i. e. , limiting the number of unreliable drugs that get to market) Pharmacokinetic: mostly affects drug-biotransformation enzymes, variants tend to have high frequency, since variation promotes population survival of toxic events. Pharmacodynamic: variations in systems targeted by drugs, monogenic variants of receptors for internal messengers tend to be disease- associated; thus, they are generally rare. Monogenic: due to allelic variation at a single gene, measured by counting the carriers of a genetic variant in a population. Polygenic / multigenic: due to variations contributed by three or more genes, measured by determining heritability through twin studies. Polymorphism: monogenic variants with a frequency > 1, possible to take therapeutic precautions.
