HDAC inhibitors for muscular dystrophies: Progress and prospects

lntroduction: Depression is responsible for the most part of the personal and socio-economie burden due to psychiatric disorders. Since antidepressant response clusters in families, pharmacogenetics represents a meaningful tool to previde tailored treatments and improve the prognosis of depression. Areas covered: This review aims to summarize and discuss the pharmacogenetics of antidepressant drugs in major depressive disorder, with a focus on the most repl icated genes, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), but also on the findings provided by new and promising analysis methods. In particular, multimarker tests such as pathway analysis and polygenic risk scores increase the power of detecting associations compared to the analysis of individuai polymorphisms. Since genetic variants are not necessarily associated with a change in protein level, gene expression studies may previde complementary information to genetic studies. Finally, the pharmacogenetic tests that have been investigated for clinica! application are discussed. Expert opinion: Despite the lack of widespread clinica! applications, preliminary resu lts suggest that pharmacogenetics may be useful to guide antidepressant treatment. The US Food and Drug Administration included pharmacogenetic indications in the labeling of several antidepressants. This represented an important official recognition of the clinica! relevance of genetic polymorphisms in antidepressant treatment.