It’s one of the more common prescription drugs, but until you need warfarin, you may have never heard of it. Sold under brand names including Coumadin® and Waran®, this blood thinner is prescribed millions of times a year in the United States to help treat or prevent blood clots. If you are undergoing major surgery, or experiencing conditions such as an irregular heartbeat or DVT (deep vein thrombosis), your doctor is likely to prescribe warfarin or another blood thinner.
But even though warfarin is common, it isn’t always easy to use. Finding the right dose for any one person is tricky, and the process often begins with trial and error. Too little of the drug, and a person can still experience a dangerous blood clot. Too much warfarin, and a person can suffer hazardous bouts of uncontrolled bleeding. Some of this individual response depends on personal genetics. Safe, effective warfarin use requires carefully calculated personalized dosing, and personal genetic information can be a helpful part of that equation.
At Navigenics, we recently launched a new Medications service, which provides personalized genetic information to help you understand which prescription drugs may work best for you. Warfarin is one of 12 medications analyzed in this feature of our service. The warfarin-related genetic results we provide can be used by your doctor to help calculate an individualized warfarin dose, using tools such as the calculator provided by www.WarfarinDosing.org.
This week, we enhanced our warfarin results further by providing an even more specific explanation of what they mean for personal warfarin dosing.
Plavix®, a prescription drug that helps prevent and treat blood clots, is one of the world’s top-selling medications. According to its manufacturer, doctors have prescribed it to more than 100 million people.Yet, genetics shows, popularity doesn’t always mean that a drug works for everyone.