Depressed? Genetics Affects How Drugs Work

September 19, 2017

(Seattle Times) – Twenty-first century “precision medicine” is all about genetics — especially when it comes to treating depression and mental illness with medication. Thanks to the relatively new field of pharmacogenomics — which the National Human Genome Research Institute defines as the use of “information about a person’s genetic makeup to choose the drugs and drug doses that are likely to work best for that particular person” — doctors can potentially bypass some of the “trial and error” phase traditionally inherent in prescribing antidepressant medication.