Why Perform an Advanced Genetics Lab Test?

 

If you could know in advance how safe and effective a particular medication would be to your patients would you want to know? 

Prescribing effective medication for your patients requires an assessment of a multitude of facts.  Recognizing that no two patients are exactly the same, that patients typically have multiple medications under management and that our genetic makeup impacts how we interacts with a drug, Pharmacogenomic (PGx) has proven to be a beneficial platform  - to help you determine the appropriate drug and dosage. 

The Advanced Genetics Lab PGx Assay reports provides medical professionals with immediate insight into individual differences in your patients’ drug processing ability and helps physicians improve the efficacy and safety of the prescribed treatments. This information can be especially valuable when potential drug to drug interactions are a possibility.

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Benefits of Pharmacogenetic testing

The advent of personalized medicine and performance-based third party contracts requires medical professionals to integrate patient specific information in the creation of treatment plans and daily patient care decisions.  Identifying a patients genotype or genetic makeup enables physicians access to an individualized approach.  According to Trend in Molecular Medicine only 50% of patients have a positive response to drug prescriptions.  There are several genes encoding enzymes, drug transporters, carriers, and membrane channels that are essential for major processes of drug absorption, digestion, metabolism, and excretion. For example, one of the largest family of genes, known as the Cytochrome P450 (CYP), are involved in the metabolism of  >70% of prescription drugs.  Genetic sequence variations in these genes can lead to altered protein function, potentially resulting in poor outcomes such as ineffective therapy and/or adverse side effects.  Combined with our pharmacy assistance program for Comprehensive Medication Management, the Advanced Genetics Lab program provides expanded support and performs as an expansion of your clinical staff. The "one size fits all" approach to health care does not work.  Clinical decisions need to be based on proven evidence of clinical efficacy.  Our genomic decision-based platform integrating the three primary decision makers - provider, patient and pharmacists - provides real-time reports, analysis and alerts identifying potential drug and serious hereditary risks. 

 

Gene-drug interactions

Once a pharmacogenetic test is performed the results are stored in our secure data base.  Updates can then be made based on changes in lifestyle, prescription orders, disease state, and impacts of market studies produced by a variety of sources including the FDA.  Advanced Genetics Lab provides this information to the appropriate medical professional who can then maintain it in the patient EHR.  Likewise, patients can access this information at any time.   Why is this important?  Adverse drug events (ADE) are the forth leading cause for emergency room visits and account for up to 7% of all hospital admissions, 20% of re-admission and vastly impacts the quality of life for your patients.  A high percentage of ADE's are caused by genetic factors.  We can help to prevent this!

  • Adverse Drug Event Statistics

    • 3rd largest cause of mortality in the U.S.

    • 5th largest cause of illness

    • Responsible for 700,000 emergency room visits each year (CDC)

    • Cost to national health care - $3.5 billion annually (CDC)

We help you provide individualized care decisions to pro-actively check each medication against your patients genetics for proper dosing, efficacy and potential serious side effects.  

 

cardiology testing

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of death for both men and women in the U.S. Historically, strategies to reduce CVD has focused on the leading risk factors: hypertension, high cholesterol levels and smoking. It is documented that half of U.S. adults over the age of 20 have at least one of these risk factors and that over 50% of heart attacks and strokes occur in patients with “normal” cholesterol levels.

As an example of one of the many uses of performing a genetic marker test on cardiovascular patients, there is a marker in DNA that predicts whether an individual will develop myopathy as a side effect of simvastatin therapy, a statin drug used for reducing cholesterol. Myopathy is painful and can result in hospitalization for patients who experience it most severely.  Advanced Genetics Lab will be able to document a genetic marker for these patients and identify which patients are at highest risk for this side effect and recommend alternative therapies.

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clinical assessments

Interested in participating in studies to determine the efficacy of certain drugs, treatment protocol or data analytics.  We help to identify areas to improve a drugs clinical efficacy, provide benefits to supporting medical professionals and help close the gap between cost, quality and resource allocation.  By eliminating the "one size fits all" approach to prescribing we can help physicians, patients and payers.  If you are interested and want to learn more please refer to our Clinical Impact Assessment section to learn more.