Miley Nguyen, PharmD & Navya Brinda
African American Health Disparities & Pharmacogenomics. How can pharmacogenomics (PGx) address health disparities in the African American population? African Americans face significant health disparities resulting from systemic inequities, including disproportionate disease burden and variability in treatment responses. PGx testing and its application can help reduce healthcare disparities by integrating population-specific databases into practice, expanding equitable access to genetic testing, and raising awareness of the importance of diversity in clinical trials.
Initiatives like ACCOuNT provide critical insights into PGx variant frequencies in African Americans. Developing African American-specific genetic databases such as the African American Cardiovascular Pharmacogenomics Consortium (ACCOuNT), enables clinicians to tailor treatment using targeted PGx data. Cardiovascular disease in African Americans is 20% higher than in Caucasian Americans (Mensah, 2018). African Americans exhibit unique frequencies of PGx variants, often absent from general guidelines derived from other ancestry groups (Jordan et al. 2023). With 500 African Americans enrolled in ACCOuNT, the genetic database provides critical genetic insights to optimize therapy for this population, allowing researchers and clinicians to utilize their genetic contributions to personalize treatment plans and facilitate more precise and effective therapy that general guidelines may overlook (Richman, 2019).
PGx streamlines treatment, reducing costs for patients and healthcare systems. Equity-focused strategies can help address both systematic barriers and individual patient care gaps to close the disparity spectrum. A University of Chicago study shows that SNP analysis is a more precise method than genome-wide genotyping to estimate individual genetic ancestry (IGA) – aiding in the creation of population-specific PGx decision support tools to improve personalized treatment (Hernandez et al., 2019). By accounting for unique genetic variations, clinicians can personalize dosing for high-risk medications such as warfarin, improving anticoagulation control and significantly reducing the likelihood of severe complications.
Diversifying clinical trial cohorts can address unique genetic ancestries. Historically, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and clinical trials have favored populations of European ancestry, resulting in limited data on unique genetic variations in minority groups, including African American individuals (Friedman et al. 2019). This lack of representation limits the development of tailored PGx interventions, hindering their effectiveness for minority groups. By diversifying clinical trial cohorts to better reflect African American genetic diversity, PGx strategies can be optimized, resulting in more precise, effective treatments that address the unique needs of these populations.
Learn more about UGenome’s Personalized Medication Service, ProPEx, or contact UGenome. You can also find case studies for UGenome’s bioinformatics services Metabolite Identification, Bone Metastasis Risk Analysis in Breast Cancer, Survival Analysis with gene signatures in cancer
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