Case study: Scripps offers personalized medicine for anti-platelet therapy

In this publication, we've been writing for years about the promise of "personalized medicine," or treatments that use genetic information to offer therapies to patients most likely to respond. U.S. providers have conducted scattered experiments in using this approach, but as far as we know they've been pilots.

Now, Scripps Health is staking a claim to being the first U.S. hospital system to integrate personalized medicine into its cardiac programs. Scripps says it's started offering a test to stent patients to determine which ones might best benefit from anti-platelet therapy--and which ones might not.

The announcement appears to build on study results, publicized in the Journal of the American Medical Association, offering evidence that people with a certain gene mutation respond less to treatment with Plavix than those without the mutation. Right now, Plavix is the second most-prescribed drug in the U.S., and is given to one million patients a year after they go through coronary stent procedures.

Scripps, which is working with Quest Diagnostics, will screen for the mutation among patients at one of its hospitals scheduled for elective coronary angiography procedures. About 70 to 100 of the 250 patients who undergo angiography each month at Scripps Green Hospital will be offered the test. If the program seems effective, Scripps may expand testing to the entire chain.

To learn more about this program:
- read this Scripps press release

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