The importance of tailoring drug treatment to ensure safe and effective treatment in a diverse South African population

Abstract

Personalised medicine ensures individualised treatment regimens in order to minimise medicine adverse reactions, medicine interactions and optimise therapeutic outcomes. In striving towards individualised pharmacotherapy within the diverse South African population, it is important that clinicians take both pharmacogenetics and unique confounders present in this population into account. Most medicines available today are metabolised by CYP450 enzymes and a basic understanding of contributing factors on the activity and expression of these polymorphic enzymes may assist clinicians in making informed decisions.