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Personalized Medicine and Tobacco-Related Health Disparities: Is There a Role for Genetics?
Chris Carlsten , and colleagues
What This Study Found Genetic approaches have been proposed as a means to improve the effectiveness of interventions to stop smoking. This essay argues that although genetics offers opportunities to tailor drug treatment and provide risk prediction, the most promising approaches for stopping smoking include efforts to improve smokers� access to health care and to tools that are known to help them quit. This is particularly true, according to the authors, among disadvantaged populations, who constitute the majority of smokers. Methods of personalizing health care using existing community- and individual-based tools are more likely than genetics to yield greater benefit for decreasing smoking-related health disparities.