The urgent need for data to make personalised medicine equitable

Warfarin is a powerful blood thinner and a leading drug for cardiovascular disease worldwide. In the case of warfarin, one study concluded that using someone’s genetic information to help guide their drug dosing would benefit 18% to 24% of people categorised as white, but have no benefit for people identified as Black, Chinese or Japanese. While that study is a decade old, the general point still holds true: A bias in our current understanding of the genetics of different populations means that some people would be helped far more than others by genetically informed personalised medicine. And in PharmGKB, one of the world’s leading databases of drug-gene interactions, 64% of the data come from people of European ancestry, though this group makes up only 16% of the global population. Warfarin is a leading drug for cardiovascular disease worldwide but in South Africa, it is among the top four drug varieties leading to hospitalisation from adverse drug reactions Someone’s genetic information to help guide their drug dosing would benefit 18% to 24% of people categorised as white, but have no benefit for people identified as Black, Chinese or Japanese A bias in our current understanding of the genetics of different populations means that some people would be helped far more than others by genetically informed personalised medicine