Importance of genomic studies for drug withdrawal with mental toxicities

Abstract

Undesired side-effects and toxicities of drugs, especially in the area of new-drug development, are negligibleless, unpredicable and often disastrous once being encountered. The suicidal behavior caused by antidepressant treatment is a typical of clinical evidence recently being discovered. We previously hypothesized that patients’ genetic status would decide the suicidal incident rate of antidepressants - it is pharmacogenetics of antidepressants may contribute of this toxicity in patients. In this review, we discuss this problem by comparing many strings of pharmacogenomics evidence of antidepressants recently being published with many other strings of evidence such as drug withdrawal with hepatotoxicity. We argue herein that pharmacogenetics may be very useful in drug withdrawal for mental toxicity. Because this is low-incidence toxicities, which are more reliable on human’s genetic characteristics. We stress the importance of genomics studies for drug withdrawal in future.