Abstract

Despite the common use of antidepressant drugs for the treatment of various psychiatric illnesses, selection of initial antidepressant therapy and subsequent drug modification strategies continue to be largely based on trial and error. There are no biomarkers that can objectively guide dose and treatment selection or alteration. The approach for antidepressant therapy management is even more concerning when we consider that the effectiveness of antidepressants tend to be delayed with low response rates. Therefore, strategies aimed at improving the current standard for selecting antidepressant treatment and doses may have significant economic and clinical benefit. A promising approach towards this effort is the use of pharmacogenomics to better identify patients that are likely to have an efficacious or adverse response from antidepressant treatment. Candidate gene approaches as well as genome-wide association studies have been conducted to identify genes or loci that influence antidepressant response. In this report, we highlighted key antidepressant pharmacogenomic findings and identified candidate pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic genes for downstream analyses and further validation. We also provided future directions regarding study methodologies and experimental design that are aimed to move antidepressant pharmacogenomics research forward.

Keywords: Antidepressants, biomarkers, depression, genes, genetics, pharmacogenomics, and pharmacogenetics.