Depression and Pharmacogenetics

Depression is the most common and leading devastating psychiatric illness that affects a majority of the world population. The treatment of depression has been a challenge for a majority of patients and healthcare practitioners. The advent of pharmacogenomics (PGx) empowered the Food and Drug Administration to approve some antidepressant biomarkers for PGx model of treatment. The PGx testing identifies whether an individual is a poor metabolizer, ultra/rapid metabolizer, intermediate metabolizer, or essential metabolizer of an antidepressants before prescription. This is a cutting edge treatment that eliminates trial and error. PGx testing has shown to precisely identify the effective medication and dose for a patient.