Heart doctors are ordering genetic tests for fewer than 7% of their patients, according to a new survey conducted by the American College of Cardiology.
The survey findings fly in the face of a growing body of evidence that suggest that genetic variability could play a key role in heart drug safety and effectiveness, and, therefore, could be potentially critical to patient heart care.
The results of the October 2010 survey, which polled 150 health professionals specializing in cardiovascular disease, were announced this week at a meeting at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
The American College of Cardiology conducted the survey after a black box warning was issued against the anti-clotting drug Plavix stating that the drug might not be fully effective in certain people who poorly metabolize the drug and could be vulnerable to heart disease, reports HeartWire. Other reasons for the survey included the usefulness of genetic testing in the dosing of the blood thinner warfarin.
Genetic tests are commercially available and often recommended by drug regulators. Critics, however, claim that these tests can be expensive and are not cost-effective. Furthermore, in the case of Plavix, critics claim there is insufficient evidence that these tests predict drug effectiveness, and that other drugs can be prescribed that are less sensitive to genetic variability.
Heart disease specialists are nevertheless confident in the tests. According to the new survey, a majority of doctors feel that personalized medicine will become much more of a reality for their practices and their patients in the next five to 10 years. And investigations into new genetic tests for drug efficacy remain an active area of research. For example, in this month’s issue of Nature Medicine, a team led by Dirk Taubert, a pharmacologist at the University Hospital of Cologne in Germany, report that genetic tests for a mutation in an enzyme called paraoxonase-1 could predict the response to Plavix.
To read more about the emerging role of genetics in medications’ safety and efficacy, read our recent feature on pharmacogenetics.
Image: Steven DePolo, Flickr.