[Recommendations for performing pharmacogenetic tests in drug monographs in Canada, France and the United States]

INTRODUCTION

Pharmacogenetics represents an opportunity in pharmaceutical practice. There are many documentary resources to support the pharmacist's work in this area.

OBJECTIVE

To compare the recommendations for carrying out pharmacogenetic tests from a documentary source in three countries: the United States, Canada and United France.

METHOD

This is a cross-sectional descriptive study. Based on the recommendations of the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium type A (the highest threshold justifying the use of a pharmacogenetic test), we identified the drug-gene pairs (23 pairs). The proposed pairs involve a total of 47 separate international nonproprietary names and 18 genes. For each drug-gene pair, we consulted three open access documentary sources (one for each target country), namely the pharmaceutical products database (DPD) for Canada, the product characteristic summary (SPC) for France and the Micromedex® monograph (IBM, Truven Health Analytics, MI, USA) for the United States. The study was conducted in September 2019.

RESULTS

About a third of the drug-gene pairs are explicitly mentioned by the gene to be targeted and by the test suggested in the documentary sources consulted. Of the 23 pairs identified by the CPIC, thirteen pairs contain "consistent" recommendations between the three documentary sources.

CONCLUSION

There is great heterogeneity regarding the recommendations for pharmacogenetic tests from three documentary sources used by pharmacists to monitor drug therapy in the United States, Canada and France. There is an urgent need to standardize the requirements for nomenclature, description and the need to use pharmacogenetic tests to ensure proper use of drugs and these tests in the clinic.