by PGx Medical | Dec 31, 2017 | Uncategorized
2017 was another big year for PGx Medical with new partnerships, more education opportunities, and expanded testing across the country.
We want to start by saying “thank you” to all the wonderful clinical partners we’ve had the privilege to work with. Your endless hours and passion to improve healthcare doesn’t go unnoticed. I would also like to thank the employees of PGx Medical. We have added some new faces to our corporate office and we are truly blessed to have such a wonderful team!
Our focus in 2017 has been improving the life and quality of care in older adults through person-centered care and education. We have continued and expanded our partnerships with professionals in the healthcare industry. Dr. Linda Shell, MA, RN has traveled around the country educating LTC nurses and clinical staff on incorporating pharmacogenetics testing into patient care to help with polypharmacy and the cascading effect it has on our senior population. Dr. Shell has been instrumental in expanding the PGx program into other states and multiple aging services organizations.
Throughout the year, PGx Medical has offered free educational webinars and had the privilege to speak to hundreds of physicians, nurses and administrators via webinar or at state and national conferences. With an estimated 100,000 deaths and upwards of two million serious adverse drug reactions in the U.S. each year related to prescription drug use, PGx has made it our goal to focus on education and personalized medicine.
In 2017, PGx Medical partnered with one of the largest Oklahoma state agencies. Through this collaboration, PGx was able to help reduce the cost of medications, while providing important medication management information to physicians, nurses, and clinics across our state.
One of the biggest stories of the year has been the opioid epidemic that is affecting thousands across the country. The PGx Medical program, via pharmacogenetics testing, has been vital in providing important patient-specific information on how those medications are being processed genetically for each individual. This information has helped guide healthcare teams in dosage adjustment and discontinuing potentially harmful medications.
We also had the privilege to partner with pharmacists who understand the importance of proper prescribing and the risks involved when a patient is on medications their body doesn’t metabolize properly. These partners have played an active role in educating others on outcomes based on changes from test results. We are humbled by their willingness to share these stories and appreciate their partnership.
Pharmacogenetics testing isn’t new. It has been around for decades but is coming to the forefront of medication management. We are excited to see that continue in 2018 and how pharmacogenetics will play a part in the new CMS regulatory requirements for unnecessary drugs.
We appreciate our long-lasting relationships with current clients and look forward to new partnerships in the coming year.
Enjoy the holidays! As always, you can contact us anytime with questions, comments or to schedule an appointment or speaking engagement.
Clay Bullard, President
PGx Medical
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
www.pgxmed.com
405-996-1564
info@pgxmed.com
by PGx Medical | Feb 24, 2017 | Friday FOCUS on Pharmacogenetics
Welcome to our Friday FOCUS on Pharmacogenetics
Each Friday we will post new and relevant information regarding Pharmacogenetics. We hope you will find this useful and pass along to colleagues. If you should have any questions regarding pharmacogenetics, please feel free to reach out to us at PGx Medical, info@pgxmed.com or 405-996-1564.
Pharmacist and Pharmacogenetics:
Pharmacists understand better then anyone the importance of proper prescribing and the risks involved if a patient is on medications their body doesn’t metabolize properly.
A pharmacist can include pharmacogenetic information in medication therapy management (MTM) programs and areas that commonly use medications affected by pharmacogenetic variations, such as, but not limited to, pain, cardio and psychiatry.
As part of the PGx Medical exclusive program, a pharmacist can identify at-risk patients, work with their physicians to manage test results, and offer ongoing medication therapy management services afterwards. The consultant pharmacist can also decipher pharmacogenetic test results to determine whether patients have the proper enzymes to metabolize their medications. This is especially important in seniors or residents living in long term care communities.
As you get older your muscles tend to decrease in size, fat increases and your metabolism begins to slow down. Age-related changes in the kidneys, liver, and other organs will influence the way many medications work. Aging can also affect the ability of the liver to break down drug compounds (metabolism). The elderly have a decrease in liver blood flow, liver size, and enzyme activity. These changes can affect the ability of the liver to break down drugs so that they are easily eliminated. Due to a decrease in liver function, it may be necessary to reduce the dose of some medications that are metabolized by the liver.
Pharmacists are well positioned to play a major role in implementing pharmacogenetic information
For more information on pharmacogenetics, contact PGx Medical at info@pgxmed.com or 405-996-1564.
source: editorsweb.org, ncbi.gov
by brant bullard | Apr 22, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
Validation
Who doesn’t want validation for the work they are doing? As a healthcare professional it is important to know that the medications you are prescribing your patients are working. If not, you begin the “trial & error” process. But by giving a patient a drug that doesn’t metabolize in their system, it could cause adverse reactions or just not metabolize so the patient never improves.
If you’re not 100% sure your patients are taking medications that are working, how can you make an informed decision?
Health care professionals go to work every day wanting to provide the highest quality, safest, most appropriate care for their patients. The bottom line is that patients should not go to a hospital or other health care setting with a fear that their health will not improve. Unfortunately, in the past there was no way of knowing for sure that a drug wasn’t working. A patient may try multiple drugs before they found one that worked. That isn’t the case any longer.
At PGx, we recognized a need for personalized medicine and we also understand that we are just touching the surface of what is yet to come.
Making More Informed Treatment Decisions for Your Patients
Not all patients respond appropriately to a standard, One Size Fits All dose. Pharmacogenetic testing provides a lifetime of protection against drug toxicity or lack of drug efficacy. This simple test will help you determine a patient’s drug sensitivity allowing you to provide better care.
Implementing the Program
The PGx Metabolic Validation Program allows a healthcare professional to gain insightful information via a simple buccal swab. The swab is then analyzed at the laboratory and a report is sent directly to the medical facility to be utilized when treating the patient. This once in a lifetime test will help physicians make informed decisions when treating patients to: reduce side effects, increase clinical response and gives health care physicians collaborative access to pinpoint appropriate medications for specific diagnoses.
We’ve made it easy to incorporate pharmacogenetics into your clinic, company, pharmacy or center. The ultimate goal for PGx Medical is to help you provide better healthcare and improve quality of life for your patients or residents.
If it costs your facility nothing, can yield life changing benefits, makes staff and consulting jobs easier and can be completed in less than a day, what is the downside and why would you not want this tool for your patients?
For more information on how you can implement this no cost program into your facility, email: info@pgxmed.com, call 405-996-1564 or go to www.pgxmed.com.
by brant bullard | Mar 19, 2014 | News
What are genetics and genomics?
Genetics is a term that refers to the study of genes and their roles in inheritance – in other words, the way that certain traits or conditions are passed down from one generation to another. Genetics involves scientific studies of genes and their effects. Genes (units of heredity) carry the instructions for making proteins, which direct the activities of cells and functions of the body. Examples of genetic or inherited disorders include cystic fibrosis (See: Learning About Cystic Fibrosis), Huntington’s disease (Learning About Huntington’s Disease), and phenylketonuria (PKU) (Learning About Phenylketonuria).
Genomics is a more recent term that describes the study of all of a person’s genes (the genome), including interactions of those genes with each other and with the person’s environment. Genomics includes the scientific study of complex diseases such as heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and cancer because these diseases are typically caused more by a combination of genetic and environmental factors than by individual genes. Genomics is offering new possibilities for therapies and treatments for some complex diseases, as well as new diagnostic methods.
Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics
The terms “pharmacogenetics” and “pharmacogenomics” are often used interchangeably in describing the intersection of pharmacology (the study of drugs, or pharmaceuticals) and genetic variability in determining an individual’s response to particular drugs. The terms may be distinguished in the following way.
Pharmacogenetics is the field of study dealing with the variability of responses to medications due to variation in single genes. Pharmacogenetics takes into account a person’s genetic information regarding specific drug receptors and how drugs are transported and metabolized by the body. The goal of pharmacogenetics is to create an individualized drug therapy that allows for the best choice and dose of drugs. One example is the breast cancer drug trastuzumab (Herceptin). This therapy works only for women whose tumors have a particular genetic profile that leads to overproduction of a protein called HER2. (See: Genetics, Disease Prevention and Treatment)
Pharmacogenomics is similar to pharmacogenetics, except that it typically involves the search for variations in multiple genes that are associated with variability in drug response. Since pharmacogenomics is one of the large-scale “omic” technologies, it can examine the entirety of the genome, rather than just single genes. Pharmacogenomic studies may also examine genetic variation among large groups of people (populations), for example, in order to see how different drugs might affect different racial or ethnic groups.
Pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic studies are leading to drugs that can be tailor-made for individuals, and adapted to each person’s particular genetic makeup. Although a person’s environment, diet, age, lifestyle, and state of health can also influence that person’s response to medicines, understanding an individual’s genetic makeup is key to creating personalized drugs that work better and have fewer side effects than the one-size-fits-all drugs that are common today. (See: Genetics, Disease Prevention and Treatment). For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends genetic testing before giving the chemotherapy drug mercaptopurine (Purinethol) to patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Some people have a genetic variant that interferes with their ability to process this drug. This processing problem can cause severe side effects, unless the standard dose is adjusted according to the patient’s genetic makeup. (See: Frequently Asked Questions about Pharmacogenomics).
Read more at: genome.gov
For more information on the PGx Metabolic Validation Program:
PGx
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
info@pgxmed.com
405-996-1564
by brant bullard | Mar 10, 2014 | Journal articles, News
With the increasing need for personalized medicine, pharmacists are beginning to embrace pharmacogenetics. And with continued education, they will have the capacity to improve patients’ lives.
The age of pharmacogenetics has arrived. Pharmacists are taking notice and using this information to help determine which patients require specific treatments, to guide dosage selection, and to predict how patients will respond to therapy.
“After decades of research, pharmacogenetics is moving from research into routine clinical practice,” said James Hoffman, PharmD, MS, BCPS, medication outcomes and safety officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “Pharmacists can help lead the way.”
Dr. Hoffman spoke about how pharmacists can better harness the power of pharmacogenetics at the American Pharmacists Association Annual Meeting and Exposition in Los Angeles, California.
He pointed out that more than 100 drug labels now provide pharmacogenetic information, and the US Food and Drug Administration uses genetic information in safety warnings, such as the recent boxed warning for codeine use in children.
Genetic tests are not being used as much as they could be to help decide on drugs and doses, Dr. Hoffman explained. However, the fact that we can now “genotype 225 genes relevant to drug metabolism for the cost of 1 or 2 single gene tests” will likely lead to increased use, he noted.
The first step to increasing pharmacist involvement in pharmacogenetics is to reduce existing knowledge gaps. “There is a need for more active learning experiences, such as continuing education and continuing professional development, to demonstrate the utility of pharmacogenetic principles in a variety of disciplines,” she said. “It was not surprising to discover in my preliminary results that only 9% of respondents had completed any continuing education related to pharmacogenetics.” Pharmacists who want to be more involved, and even those who are unsure, need to actively seek out educational experiences.
Pharmacists with access to pharmacogenetic information should use it when recommending changes to a patient’s drug therapy. “Many community pharmacists were able to identify the appropriate tests required for various drugs, but the majority struggled with modifying drug regimens when provided with pharmacogenetic data,” Dr. Ammons explained. Increased documentation is essential to provide pharmacists and other healthcare providers with a foundation for the application of such information.
Both Dr. Ammons and Dr. Hoffman point out that education and collaboration are critical to getting pharmacists involved in pharmacogenetics. With more knowledge, they will have the capacity to improve patients’ lives.
Read entire article at Medscape.com
