HDAC inhibitors for muscular dystrophies: Progress and prospects

lntroduction: Depression is responsible for the most part of the personal and socio-economie burden\r\ndue to psychiatric disorders. Since antidepressant response clusters in families, pharmacogenetics\r\nrepresents a meaningful tool to previde tailored treatments and improve the prognosis of depression.\r\nAreas covered: This review aims to summarize and discuss the pharmacogenetics of antidepressant\r\ndrugs in major depressive disorder, with a focus on the most repl icated genes, genome-wide association\r\nstudies (GWAS), but also on the findings provided by new and promising analysis methods. In\r\nparticular, multimarker tests such as pathway analysis and polygenic risk scores increase the power of\r\ndetecting associations compared to the analysis of individuai polymorphisms. Since genetic variants are\r\nnot necessarily associated with a change in protein level, gene expression studies may previde\r\ncomplementary information to genetic studies. Finally, the pharmacogenetic tests that have been\r\ninvestigated for clinica! application are discussed.\r\nExpert opinion: Despite the lack of widespread clinica! applications, preliminary resu lts suggest that\r\npharmacogenetics may be useful to guide antidepressant treatment. The US Food and Drug\r\nAdministration included pharmacogenetic indications in the labeling of several antidepressants. This\r\nrepresented an important official recognition of the clinica! relevance of genetic polymorphisms in\r\nantidepressant treatment.