Grant: Project Grant

In general, women have a higher risk of adverse drug reactions than men. This is believed to be because women may present higher blood concentrations of drugs than men when they are given a specific dose of a medication. Yet, the exact reasons for these differences are unknown. This is partly because the inclusion of women in studies during the development of new drugs is generally limited. Thus, doses used in clinical studies, and eventually in the "real world", are largely based on information collected in men. Many mechanisms have been proposed to explain the differences in drug concentrations between women and men. For example, women have a lower body weight and kidney function, which should lead to higher drug concentrations. Another potential mechanism that has not been widely studied is that genetic variations could have different effects between women and men. We propose to conduct a comprehensive study in 10 000 participants from a large study to identify if individual characteristics, such as weight and age, as well as genetic variations in genes implicated in the absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination of drugs, influence the concentrations and dosing of 48 drugs commonly used by Canadians. The goal of this project is to identify these factors and determine how they can be used to more closely tailor drug selection and treatment in patients.