Pharmacist Consult Reports to Support Pharmacogenomics Report Interpretation

The clinical implementation of pharmacogenomics (PGx) has often involved teams that include pharmacists. PGx laboratories often provide baseline information within the laboratory report that is based on Food and Drug Administration and Clinical Pharmacogenomics Implementation Consortium guidance, but information is often provided independent of concurrent disease states or medication use, among other clinical factors. Major challenges to widescale implementation of PGx include lack of physician experience or confidence in interpreting the data. The purpose of this paper is to describe how pharmacists can help further personalize PGx information and identify clinical recommendations for a given patient.

This work was performed as a secondary objective of a study evaluating genetic biomarkers of opioid addiction risk. This portion of the study utilized a descriptive analysis of pharmacist consult reports that consist of individualized, patient-level clinical recommendations that take into account current medications, current health conditions, and PGx data. A panel of 60 common PGx targets were tested among patients being treated for chronic pain or opioid use disorder (OUD). A pharmacist consult report was generated and compared with standard laboratory reporting of general PGx information.

Of the 252 patients, PGx reports for 198 (78.6%) contained red and/or yellow clinical decision support flags for medications with actionable or informative PGx guidance for currently prescribed medications. Pharmacists recommended modifications to current prescriptions for 31 (53%) of the patients with actionable flags and 17 (12%) of the patients with informative flags. Drug classes most commonly included medications for cardiology, depression and anxiety, pain (opioids) and gastrointestinal management. Taken together, 24.2% of the actionable and informative flags had immediate clinical value based on the pharmacist's review. An additional 217 (86%) received one or more clinical recommendations not related to PGx.

While PGx provides another opportunity for pharmacotherapy personalization, PGx data must be considered within the context of other patient-specific factors. Pharmacists were able to streamline the PGx report flags and identify other pharmacotherapy interventions following application of patient-specific data, thereby developing a brief report of recommendations for the patient's prescriber(s). Engaging clinical pharmacists in the PGx clinical decision process may help to facilitate more widespread PGx implementation.