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POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — Taking medication efficacy and safety to an individual level, Fruth Pharmacy plans to offer the Rxight pharmacogenetics program from MD Labs.
Pharmacogenetics leverages information about a person’s genetic profile for selecting medications and dosages likely to work best for them, helping them to avoid ineffective or possibly adverse drug reactions.
The Rxight program works as follows: After the patient’s doctor authorizes the lab test, he or she visits a Fruth Pharmacy for a cheek swab and to buy the Rxight test. The Fruth pharmacist gets the results from the lab in five to seven days. Next, each patient goes over the results with a pharmacogenetics-trained Fruth pharmacist during a personalized medication review. The pharmacist then coordinates care with the patient’s prescribing physician. (See video above.)
“This helps explain why some people wind up in an emergency room from taking a drug while others do fine on the same medication,” Lynne Fruth, president of Fruth Pharmacy, said in a statement. “Until recently, drugs have been prescribed hoping that each drug works pretty much the same in everybody, but knowing they don’t. Pharmacogenetics information challenges this one-size-fits-all approach and opens the door to more personalized approaches to prescribing and using medication.”
Overall, Fruth Pharmacy operates 29 drug stores in West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky.
Rxight (pronounced “right”) covers more than 200 prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines. The test provides information on 14 therapeutic drug classes, including pain, blood pressure, blood thinner, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, respiratory issues and others.
“We’re thrilled to be launching Rxight with Fruth Pharmacy,” stated Matthew Rutledge, co-founder of Reno, Nev.-based MD Labs, a CLIA-certified, high-complexity laboratory. “Together, we will help physicians make more informed prescribing decisions to help their patients avoid medications that may be ineffective or inadvertently cause adverse drug reactions or catastrophic events. The key question is, just like a deadly allergy, do you want to know before or after you take the medication?”
MD Labs reported that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 82% of U.S. adults take at least one medication and 29% take five or more. What’s more, the CDC said that annually there are over 2 million adverse drug reactions that lead to emergency room visits, with an estimated 100,000 deaths.
