Using electronic health records to find genes involved in drug response

In some patients, certain drugs can cause side effects. In other patients, certain drugs may not work as well as they are supposed to. Severe drug effects can even lead to death in some cases in hospital patients. Being able to predict which patients may process the drugs differently than others and which may patients may be at risk for side effects could improve patient care and prevent side effects. Studies have found dozens of genes that can affect how patients respond to drugs. Many more remain to be found. But the types of studies needed to find these genes can be hard to do and take a long time. Electronic health records contain information about drugs patients have taken and how they responded to these drugs, including side effects. If this information could be linked to information about a patient’s genes, it could help researchers find genetic changes involved in drug reactions. In this project, researchers are testing whether gene changes in the DNA samples in BioVU can predict drug responses noted in the electronic records linked to those samples. They believe that uncovering gene information could speed up research on gene-drug interactions and could greatly improve patient care.