How genetic variation affects patient response and outcome to therapy for psoriasis

Psoriasis is a prevalent chronic inflammatory condition that affects the skin. There are many treatments available for psoriasis but they are not universally effective and some have associated toxicities. Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics explore the relationship between individual genetic variation and drug effect to allow targeted 'personalized' therapy for patients. There has been very limited pharmacogenetic research regarding psoriasis, with most limited to small retrospective case-control studies looking at single-nucleotide polymorphisms in candidate genes involved in drug pharmacokinetics. We review the pharmacogenetic investigation of treatments for psoriasis to date, including emerging pharmacogenomic studies. In addition, we discuss how such genetic data could be incorporated into routine clinical practice and future areas for development in this field.