Clinical Pharmacogenomics of Antidepressant Response

Despite remarkable progress in recent decades in modern psychopharmacotherapy, patients vary substantially in their response to antidepressants, ranging from total remission to complete treatment failure. Adverse effects, often bothersome and occasionally life-threatening, continue to represent significant challenges to patients and clinicians. Mechanisms responsible for such variability remain poorly understood. In addition, although less appreciated, substantial cross-ethnic variations in psychotropic responses often exist. Recent developments in the field of pharmacogenetics indicate that genetic factors may account for a large part of these differences in response. Specific genetic polymorphisms affecting the function of the serotonin (SERT) system has been postulated to predict the effect of antidepressants. Similarly, genetic mutations have been shown to exert a predominant influence on the expression of a number of drug-metabolizing enzymes, including most of the cytochrome P-450 enzymes (e.g., CYP2C19 and CYP3A4) that are responsible for the biotransformation of most antidepressants. Polymorphisms of genes controlling these enzymes have been found to be strongly associated with the propensity for various kinds of side effects. Capitalizing on these new developments, the proposed study will examine the predictive value of some of these genetic polymorphisms in 400 patients with DSM-IV major depression prospectively treated with citalopram (CIT). It is postulated that mutations affecting the function of SERT will predict responses to CIT, polymorphism of CYP2C19 will be associated with the side effect profiles and pharmacokinetics of CIT. The proposed study represents an extension and replication of a 5-year NIH/NIMH collaborative project that had designed and initiated in 2001 by the PI, which is currently ongoing at three sites in the U.S. ( "Ethnic Variations in Antidepressant Response" 1 R01 MH62421; 1R01MH626761R01MH62531, 07/01 - 06/06). In the original study, the inclusion of the two comparison groups, African Americans and Caucasians, whose genetic mutation patterns diverge significantly from each other, will allow us to examine how these differences affect their antidepressant response patterns and whether the associations are "replicable" across ethnicity. Results will be pooled with those derived from other sites, and will represent a rare opportunity to compare findings across Taiwanese, African American and Caucasian subjects with comparable diagnosis and treated with an identical protocol.