Personalizing Pediatric Pain Medicine: Using Population-Specific Pharmacogenetics, Genomics, and Other –Omics Approaches to Predict Response

Abstract

Personalized medicine is the science of individualized prevention and therapy. The notion that "one size fits all" has been replaced by the idea of patient-tailored health care. Within this paradigm, the research community has turned to examine genetic predictors of disease and treatment responses. Pain researchers have produced genetic studies over the last decade that evaluate the association of genetic variability with pain sensitivity and analgesic response. While most of these studies have been conducted among cohorts of subjects of European descent, some have included other racial and ethnic groups, providing evidence of variable responses to analgesics. Simultaneously, there is an increased recognition regarding the complexity of pain research, acknowledging the additional role of epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic factors in the development, experience, and treatment of pain. This article provides an introduction to population-specific pharmacogenetics, proteomics and other "-omics" technologies to predict drug response to pain medications in children. It aims to provide anesthesiologists with the basic knowledge to understand the potential implications of genetic and epigenetic factors managing the pain of pediatric patients.