RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Personalized Medicine and Tobacco-Related Health Disparities: Is There a Role for Genetics?
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 366
OP 371
DO 10.1370/afm.1244
VO 9
IS 4
A1 Chris Carlsten
A1 Abigail Halperin
A1 Julia Crouch
A1 Wylie Burke
YR 2011
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/9/4/366.abstract
AB Genetic testing has been proposed as a means to increase smoking cessation rates and thus reduce smoking prevalence. To understand how that might be practically possible, with appreciation of the current social context of tobacco use and dependence, we performed a contextual analysis of smoking-related genetics and smoking cessation. To provide added value, genetics would need to inform and improve existing interventions for smokers (including behavioral and pharmacological treatments). Pharmacogenetics offers the most promising potential, because it may improve the efficacy of medication-based smoking cessations strategies. All proven interventions for treating tobacco dependence, however, including simple cost-effective measures, such as quit lines and physician counseling, are underutilized. As tobacco use occurs disproportionately among disadvantaged populations, efforts to improve smokers’ access to health care, and to the tools that are known to help them quit, represent the most promising approaches for reducing smoking prevalence within these groups. Similar considerations apply to other chronic diseases contributing to population-level health disparities. We conclude that although genetics offers increasing opportunities to tailor drug treatment, and may in some cases provide useful risk prediction, other methods of personalizing care are likely to yield greater benefit to populations experiencing health disparities related to tobacco use.