Research under way on variability in drug response among the Dominican population

• Doctors Elizabeth Marisol Pérez Duval, Idania Rodeiro and Berniza Calderón are conducting research covering variability in response to, efficacy of and toxicity of medicines.

Santo Domingo.- To address one of the main problems facing drug therapy – variability in response to medicines – Doctors Elizabeth Marisol Pérez Duval, Idania Rodeiro Guerra and Berniza Calderón are conducting the research project “Pharmacogenetic characterisation of the main systems that eliminate drugs from the body: a contribution to introducing personalised medicine in the Dominican population”.

The study, sponsored and conducted by the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) in collaboration with the Diabetes, Obesity and Specialties Medical Centre (CEMDOE), covers variability in drug response, efficacy and toxicity and will run for two years, focusing on the pharmacogenetic characterisation of the enzymes responsible for metabolising and eliminating widely used drugs in the country.

The study’s principal investigator, Dr. Elizabeth Marisol Pérez Duval of INTEC, said population-level pharmacogenetic studies show that the expression of the systems involved in metabolising and eliminating most of the drugs people take varies across the population; that is why we need to understand the differences between our genomes and why those variations make us react differently to a drug and even affect our risk of disease.

People’s genetics play a decisive role in variation in drug response, which is why, in recent decades, one of the main applications of the discovery of the human genome has been the development of pharmacogenetics, opening up new paradigms in the development and prescription of medicines, explained Idania Rodeiro Guerra, co-investigator and pharmacogenetics expert focusing on the influence of individual genetics and its modulation by environmental factors.

Likewise, Dr. Berniza Calderón, co-investigator at CEMDOE and INTEC, noted that the Dominican population has been little studied in this area, and said knowledge about the presence of genetic polymorphisms in systems involved in therapeutic response is essential.

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About CEMDOE

An outpatient medical centre specialising in chronic diseases that offers a comprehensive care model focused on the safety, quality and experience of patients and their families, supported by international processes, standards and policies that ensure the success of its purpose.

CEMDOE is part of INTEGRA, the Dominican Republic’s first health ecosystem, which aims to improve the population’s health in a sustainable way.

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