Improving Pain Management with Pharmacogenomics: A General Introduction.

Tailoring an individual patient's pain treatment is paramount to decreasing patient suffering and diminishing morbidity. Performing pharmacogenomic (PGx) testing can help guide prescribing decisions for current and future medication therapy by assisting dosage adjustments to increase therapeutic efficacy, decrease adverse drug reactions and avoid potentially ineffective medications. Pharmacogenomics is the study of inherited genetic information that influences drug response. Therapeutic response to pain medications is influenced by several factors including age, sex, body weight, concomitant diseases, compliance, lifestyle, drug interactions and genes. Genes of interest associated with pain medications include cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, OPRM1, COMT, ABCB1, UGT, COX, OPRK1, OPRD1. To properly use PGx results in clinical application requires the healthcare provider to distinguish the difference between types of PGx tests, interpret test results, be familiar with PGx databases to use for prescribing guidance, and evaluate the level of evidence for specific gene-drug associations. This article introduces these concepts to assist the healthcare provider with incorporating PGx into practice to improve pain management.