Drug response racial/ethnic differences

Very few studies have focused on ethnic African groups. Therefore, very little is known about the molecular basis of ethnic differences in disease incidence and drug response in native Africans. Unfortunately, previous studies in African American subjects cannot be generalized to include native African populations, due to the great heterogeneity of racial ancestry of African American subjects, as well as other factors. 

The health care needs of racial and ethnic groups are similar in virtually all respects, but in some cases diseases or drug responsiveness based on genotypic variation may correlate with race or ethnicity. Knowing that those variations exist, when to test for them, and when to take them into account in clinical decisions will require research directed at uncovering genotypic differences that correlate with race or ethnicity. 

Besides cultural differences, there are also ethnic and racial differences in the physiological response to dmgs. As you ll recall from Chapter 2, pharmacogenetics is the study of the influence genetics have on a drug response. For example children with Reyes Syndrome, which is a hver disease, cannot metabolize aspirin because of a genetic defect. 

Subsequently the medication was approved for self identified African Americans by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the first time a medication was approved for a specific racial group (US Food and Drug Administration, 2005). This combination was then marketed as BiDil. The approval led to a great deal of controversy and discussion, much of it critical, about the FDA decision. The findings from these trials, however, provide evidence that ethnicity can make a difference in clinical treatment response (Sankar 8c Kahn, 2005). 

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