[Personalized medicine in psychiatry: nightmare of the industry?]

Personalized medicine is a hot topic in the literature of the psychiatric field but it seems that regular clinical application of valid tests are awaited. Urgent requirement of objective tools for screening high-risk patients is postulated by prominent authors because long-term set up time, serious side effects or ineffectiveness of psychiatric agents mean a great challenge for clinicians to find optimal therapy on time. Unwanted suffering from inaccurate medicine, progression of the disorder and mistrust or in adherence of the patients are dramatic consequences of the delay of adequate therapy which is linked with irreversible health and mental damages and financial loss. On the other hand, a growing body of data are published on pharmacogenomic studies in association with psychiatric conditions. Although several pharmacogenetic tests are commercially available, accurate use of these tools are absent from clinical protocols. Here we give a short review on the most important pharmacogenomic results and a discussion on possible conflict of interests around pharmacogenetic tests. We conclude that all participants of the health care system could benefit from personalized medicine in psychiatry.