It’s been more than a decade since the human genome was published.And some critics have wondered where the promised medical applications are.Well, a _____1_____ in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine talks about how knowledge of a patient’s genome is allowing doctors to pick the best drug for that patient, along with dosage and duration of treatment.

For example, last year the FDA added a warning to the _____2_____ info for the widely used anticlotting drug clopidogrel.Because patients with a particular genetic variant might not respond well to that drug.Another example is the antibiotic floxacillin.The drug helps treat most people’s staph infections.But it’s _____3_____ liver problems in rare individuals carrying another specific gene set.

Unfortunately, it’s still uncommon for docs to get genome info about patients, so that wealth of knowledge isn’t often ______4_____.Insurers don’t want to cover widespread pharmacogenomic testing without lots of evidence that it’s applicable.Which slows the accumulation of whatever drug-gene interaction evidence would be useful.Here’s hoping that _____5_____ genome analysis accelerates the use of genetic information.
【視聽(tīng)版科學(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】