Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics of cardiovascular disease

Scope

An estimated 81 million American adults (37.1 percent) have cardiovascular disease (CVD), including coronary artery disease, hypertension, congestive heart failure, and stroke (1). CVD accounts for 36.3 percent of all deaths in the United States (2,400 deaths daily) and is the most common cause of death in developed countries. These chronic diseases usually require lifelong drug treatment, and medications for their treatment or prevention are among the most commonly prescribed drugs worldwide. Hypertension, congestive heart failure, and other CVDs are often considered as discrete entities, but are, in fact, complex and heterogeneous syndromes mediated by many different pathophysiological mechanisms that eventually result in a similar clinical picture. As a result, clear and reproducible identification of environmental and genetic factors that contribute to these multifactorial diseases is challenging. Adding to the challenges, there is large variability, only a portion of which is genetically determined, among patients in their responses to a drug for a particular disease.