UNIVERSITY of South Australia senior lecturer in pharmacy Dr Vijay Suppiah has called for Australian pharmacists to embrace pharmacogenetic (PGx) testing to deliver medication more effectively and slash around $2.4 billion wasted each year through unsafe and ineffective drug prescriptions.
"PGx testing -- mapping a person's genetic makeup -- is the most effective way to ensure patients are prescribed drugs which suit their specific DNA profile," Suppiah said.
"Most people expect that when they get a prescription filled from a pharmacy, it will be effective and have minimal side effects. Unfortunately, that only happens in up to 60% of cases," he said, with genetic makeup playing a large role in whether a specific drug will work or cause certain side effects.
See his full argument in the Australian Journal of Primary Health at publish.csiro.au.
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