Emma Magavern of Queen Mary University of London and colleagues analyzed data from UK pharmacovigilance registries and concluded that just three genes are responsible for three-quarters of preventable adverse drug reactions. The analysis included nearly 1.35 million reports of adverse drug reactions involving 2,500 substances from 1963 to 2024. The results were published in the journal PLoS Medicine.
According to the researchers, nine percent of the studied side effects could have been prevented by prescribing drugs based on pharmacogenomic analysis. Moreover, 75 percent of them were caused by just three genes responsible for the metabolism and transport of drugs - CYP2C19, CYP2D6 and SLCO1B1. 47 percent of pharmacogenomically preventable side effects were due to drugs for the treatment of psychiatric diseases, 24 percent - cardiovascular.