Approximately 50 years ago, pharmacogenetics emerged as a new field of medicine that may explain human drug action. Anesthesia, in particular, played a key role in these early investigations. An understanding of how an individual’s genetic footprint influences drug metabolism and effectiveness may allow tailored prescriptions, improving outcomes and safety; and such concepts, which form the bac...

In the last several years pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics have attracted the interest of the scientific community and of important pharmaceutical groups. What is the consequence for medicine and for the pharmaceutical industry? What has emerged from this investment, and what can we expect for the future? As with many new technologies, pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics were first adapt...

Pharmacogenetics offers the prospect of an era of safer and more effective drugs, as well as more individualized use of drug therapies. The effect of human genetic variance on responses to therapy will influence drug-development clinical trials and the use of products in clinical practice. It also promises to raise new ethical challenges, in particular in the fields of research and therapy. Las...

Pharmacogenetics offers the potential to optimize treatment for individual patients by using genetic information to improve efficacy or avoid side effects. While there are a number of examples in which the approach is already in routine clinical usage, exploitation of this approach in asthma is still under development. A number of examples of possible pharmacogenetic approaches that may prove o...

“Pharmacogenetics deals with pharmacological responses and their modification by hereditary influences.” This definition, offered by Werner Kalow in the first book dedicated to pharmacogenetics, highlights the three pillars of this discipline: pharmacology, genetics and human diversity [1]. Pharmacogenetics has evolved greatly over the 50 years since Kalow ́s book was published, and was rechrist...