Proof of Concept: Genesight

There already exists a commercial genetic test that can tell you important insights into which psychiatric drugs and dosages would not work well for you.

Last week in “Will Genetic Psychiatry Cause Another Holocaust? My mildly optimistic response to Eric Turkheimer’s ‘Gloomy Prospect’ on whether genetics could someday help psychiatrists treat patients better,” I wrote about how I hope that genetic science ought to be able to to someday invent tests that can help guide which medications you, personally, should try first and which ones you should avoid.

A commenter pointed out that for several years there has existed a service called Genesight for getting some insights upfront into which psychotropic drugs for your personal mental health problems would work least badly for you.

Genesight advertises:

Medication trial and error can feel frustrating

We know the process of finding medications for mental health conditions like depression, anxiety or ADHD can be time-consuming and debilitating. The GeneSight® test may help.

What is the GeneSight Psychotropic test?

The GeneSight Psychotropic test is a genetic test that shows your healthcare provider how your genes may affect medication outcomes.

The GeneSight test may reveal which medications to treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, and other mental health conditions that:

Require dose adjustments

Be less likely to work

Have an increased risk of side effects based on your DNA

Is the GeneSight test right for you?

Has a mental health medication failed you in the past?

Is your current mental health medication not working?

Does your mental health medication cause unwanted side effects?

Note that Genesight doesn’t, at present, attempt to predict how your brain will respond to, say, Prozac vs. Zoloft. Instead, it just, primarily, focuses upon your liver: Which drugs will be metabolized by your liver at an optimal pace? If you metabolize the drug faster than average, you may need a bigger dose. And slower than average can cause more nasty side effects.

So, Genesight can’t predict which drug will cure what ails you, just which drugs and dosages are likely to be wrong for you and your liver.

But because modern trial-and-error pharmaceutical psychiatry tends to be such a crap shoot, Genesight can help you avoid wasting time and suffering from both worse than normal side effects and ineffectually small doses.

Is Genesight a real business?

Paywall here.