Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (journal)

Study uses AI to cast light on harmful drug-drug interactions

Using AI, a team identified a gap in post-market drug safety: not all published reports of dangerous drug interactions are taken up by recognized purveyors of drug safety information.

Members of the Kang lab include (front row from left) Melissa Deleeuw, Jing-Qiong (Katty) Kang, MD, PhD, Wangzhen Shen, MD, and Karishma Randhave, and (back row from left) Ekta Anand, Debbie Song, and Kirill Zavalin, PhD. (photo by Susan Urmy)

Therapy for genetic epilepsy in children showing promise

Preliminary results of a clinical trial of 4-phenylbutyrate (PBA) “show a significant reduction in seizure activity among participants.”

Study shows gene-drug interactions are common

When a drug or combination of drugs causes different responses in different people, genetic variation is often at play. Pharmacogenomics, through discovery of genetic risk and use of clinical genotyping, aims to reduce trial-and-error approaches to drug prescribing.

Certain drug exposures correlate with reduced COVID severity: study

Analyzing electronic health records (EHR) of 9,748 patients diagnosed with COVID-19, Cosmin Bejan, PhD, Elizabeth Phillips, MD, and colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center asked whether COVID disease severity correlated with any drugs that happened to be taken by these patients in the months leading up to their diagnosis.

From left, Dan Roden, MD, Ayesha Muhammad, Jonathan Mosley, MD, PhD, and Sara Van Driest, MD, PhD, found that a genome-wide approach can improve the prediction of drug responses.

For more precise drug treatments, ‘squeeze’ the genome: study finds

Large-scale studies will be required to identify the complexity of genetic variations that affect how patients respond to a given drug and whether they will have side effects, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Drug interaction causes hypotension

A muscle relaxing-drug and inhibitors of the metabolic enzyme CYP1A2 interact to cause severely low blood pressure and should not be co-prescribed, Vanderbilt investigators caution.