GeneSight Psychotropic Testing

At Empowered Health, we offer many precision medicine advanced testing tools that include a deeper awareness to provide the most educated medical decisions for the persons’ individual health journey.

Psychotropic genetic testing is another advanced test that we utilize across all age groups. GeneSight psychotropic testing analyzes how your genes affect medication outcomes by important genetic variations in your DNA. This is called a pharmacogenomic test. The test is done through a simple cheek swab. The test is ordered by your provider and done at Empowered Health or sent home and done in the convenience of the your home.

The results can inform your provider about how you may break down or respond to certain medications commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, or other psychiatric conditions. This test can also detect MTHFR genetic mutations (an interference with how your body processes folic acid). Usual methods for determining which medications may work well in an individual is through family history or trial and error basis which often end in treatment failures.

GeneSight utilizes your own DNA to determine how the medication will be broken down in the body as well as how the body will respond. The GeneSight report tells the provider if lower doses are more effective versus higher doses of a particular medication. It can determine reduced efficacy or if a person may have an increased risk of adverse side effects along with gene-drug interactions.

There are four different types of metabolizers which include poor metabolizers, intermediate, normal, or ultrarapid. This test determines the type of metabolizer to prevent adverse side effects or decreased effectiveness from medications. Depression and other mental health disorders are very prevalent. About 1 in every 4 women may experience clinical depression in their lifetime. Young women, ages 12-17, are three times as likely to experience depression. Trial and error treatment is very frustrating for the patient and the percentage of patients who may achieve depression remission decreases with each medication change.

There are many factors that determine how a medication will respond including drug-drug interactions, drug-food, lifestyle factors, age, allergies and the persons’ unique genetic code. Genesight determines the person’s unique genetic code thus removes this variable. Studies show that patients experienced 70% greater improvement in depression symptoms when GeneSight guided their treatment compared to unguided treatment. This can save in medication costs, increase medication adherence, and reduction in the need for multiple medications.

At Empowered Health, we use GeneSight psychotropic testing for giving more concrete precision-driven decision making. This is just one precision medicine tool in our toolbox for assisting with the treatment of depression. We often pair this with our root cause approach and comprehensive lab panel to augment the patient’s individual health action plan. 

References

Greden, J.F., et al. (2019). Impact of pharmacogenomics on clinical outcomes in major  

     depressive disorder in the GUIDED trial: A large, patient and rater-blinded, randomized, 

     controlled study. Journal of Psychiatric Research. Retrieved from 

GeneSight. (2022). GeneSight psychotropic test, clinical studies. Retrieved from 

     http://www.genesight.com