Pharmacogenomic Testing: The Science That Isn't
Pharmacogenomic testing (analyzing a person's DNA to determine how certain medications might be handled; e.g., whether they are slow or fast metabolizers, etc.) is of ZERO VALUE in determining which psychotropic agent to select for a given patient.
Inasmuch as efficacy can never be entirely predicted, adopting a target symptom-based approach and attending to a number of demographic and psychosocial variables on a case-by-case basis leads the experienced clinician to nonetheless select the right class of medication virtually 100% of the time, a process which these blood tests do not inform in the least. As physical thresholds are manipulated, symptom improvement is all but guaranteed.
All pharmacogenomic testing can do, meanwhile, is to suggest which agents might be better tolerated by a given patient, and which others might cause problems at standard doses, but tolerability should always be assured by adopting a low-dose, conservative approach at the outset of treatment, and titrating slowly until the target dose is reached and/or maximal efficacy is established.
There is no need to pay hundreds of dollars for information that neither informs nor affects a treatment plan approached in this manner. Moreover, sometimes the genomic profile will suggest that certain medications are best avoided, when the clinical reality is that those medications can be safely and cautiously used, and are the very agents that are most indicated for symptom relief and ultimate remission.