Your genes affect not only how you look and your predisposition to disease, but it would appear that they also affect your responsiveness to different drug treatments following disease onset.

In the emerging field of pharmacogenetics, scientists study genome variations and correlate them with drug treatment response.  For example, variations (also called polymorphisms) in genes encoding enzymes involved in drug metabolism have been found to affect the activation, deactivation, and toxicity of drugs used to treat cancer, heart disease, and psychiatric disorders.  Recently, scientists found that DNA sequence can also be used to predict responsiveness to current Hepatitis C treatment (a More >