DNA Strands

What is Genetic Testing?

Genetic testing can help the Doctor understand how your DNA might impact your medications. It can help reduce the trial and error period with medications. Patients express that they feel more stability and less side effects

How does it work?

There are a few different companies now that offer genetic testing for different psychiatric medications and some of the names are Genesight and Genomind. Genesight is a company that uses a simple cheek swab to get a patient's DNA and then the doctor mails in the sample to the company's lab to get analyzed. The doctor gets the results within 3 days of the lab receiving the sample which is usually a report of all the psychiatric medications (antidepressants, anxiolytics, and mood stabilizers) that are good for the patient's specific genotype. It analyzes things like the serotonin transporter gene and also analyzes the liver's P450 enzymes to find out if a patient is a fast, slow or intermediate metabolizer of certain medications.

There are multiple published studies that show the utility of this test as valid and that it will cut down on time to find the right medication for a patient instead of the lengthy medication trials that are often necessary to find the right medication for a patient.