Comparison of clinical pharmacogenetic recommendations across therapeutic areas

Evaluations from pharmacogenetics implementation programs at major US medical centers have reported variability in the clinical adoption of pharmacogenetics across therapeutic areas. A potential cause for this variability may involve therapeutic area-specific differences in published pharmacogenetics recommendations to clinicians. To date, however, the potential for differences in clinical pharmacogenetics recommendations by therapeutic areas from prominent US guidance sources has not been assessed. Accordingly, our objective was to comprehensively compare essential elements from clinical pharmacogenetics recommendations contained within Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium guidelines, US Food and Drug Administration drug labels and clinical practice guidelines from US professional medical organizations across therapeutic areas.

We analyzed clinical pharmacogenetics recommendation elements within Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium guidelines, US Food and Drug Administration drug labels and professional clinical practice guidelines through 05/24/19.

We identified 606 unique clinical pharmacogenetics recommendations, with the most recommendations involving oncology (217 recommendations), hematology (79), psychiatry (65), cardiovascular (43) and anesthetic (37) medications. Within our analyses, we observed considerable variability across therapeutic areas within the following essential pharmacogenetics recommendation elements: the recommended clinical management strategy; the relevant genetic biomarkers; the organizations providing pharmacogenetics recommendations; whether routine genetic screening was recommended; and the time since recommendations were published.

On the basis of our results, we infer that observed differences in clinical pharmacogenetics recommendations across therapeutic areas may result from specific factors associated with individual disease states, the associated genetic biomarkers, and the characteristics of the organizations providing recommendations.