Personal medicine at community pharmacies in Canada

The objective of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of implementing personalized medication services into community pharmacy practice and to assess the number of drug therapy problems identified as a result of pharmacogenomic screening.

The study was carried out in two community pharmacies in Toronto, Canada

One hundred patients taking a mean of 4.9 chronic medications were enrolled in the study. Pharmacists cited the most common reasons for pharmacogenomic  (PGx) testing as ineffective therapy (43.0%), to address an adverse reaction (32.6%), and to guide initiation of therapy (10.4%).  An average of 1.3 drug therapy problems directly related to the PGx testing were identified per patient. Pharmacist recommendations included change in therapy (60.3%), dose adjustment (13.2%), discontinuation of a drug (4.4%), and increased monitoring (22.1%).

Read more by Papastergiou et al. 2017. The Innovative Canadian Pharmacogenomic Screening Initiative in Community Pharmacy (ICANPIC) study. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association 57 (2017) 624-629.

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