Dopamine D₃ Receptor Polymorphisms May Influence Antipsychotic Response

Personalized medicine holds the promise that clinicians might use patients' individual pharmacogenomic profiles to prescribe effective medications. These researchers performed a subanalysis of results from an industry-sponsored, proof-of-concept, multisite, double-blind study, which randomized patients with acute exacerbations of schizophrenia to an experimental dopamine receptor D₃ (DRD₃) antagonist (ABT-925), administered at 50 or 150 mg/day, or placebo for 6 weeks.

There were 117 patients who were genotyped for polymorphisms in DRD3 (Ser9Gly), the catechol-O-methyl transferase gene (COMT), and the dopamine transporter gene (SLC6A3). Improvements on the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) were significantly greater with ABT-925 tha…