A Genetic Method to Predict the Effects of Personalized Treatments for Sexual Dysfunction in Women
March 04 2021 - 11:36AM
PR Newswire (US)
There is a strict embargo on this press release and article
until the time of its scheduled publication (March 5th, 2021 at 2pm
ET). The link to the article, which will go live upon
publication:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246828
ALMERE, Netherlands,
March 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The
influential open access journal PLOS ONE published an article today
on a personalized medicine approach directed at the treatment of
low sexual desire and arousal in women (Daniël Höhle, et al).
Sexual functioning and its problems are - in general - affected by
both biological and psychological mechanisms. This article deals
with a personalized medical approach to sexual problems, and thus
has a primarily biological perspective. Two subtypes possibly with
different underlying mechanisms responsible for the condition
Female Sexual Interest / Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) are
distinguished: 1) Women who have relatively insensitive systems in
the brain to sexual stimuli and 2) women who are prone to
activation of sexual inhibition in the brain when exposed to sexual
stimuli (but have a normal to high sensitivity to sexual stimuli).
Two different on-demand drugs have been developed in line with
these mechanisms. This article describes the development of a new
genetic method (suitable for small groups) based on Phenotype
Prediction Scores (PPS) using Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms
(SNPs). SNPs are the genetic variations between human. This method
has resulted in two PPS formulas, which can be used to predict for
each drug individually whether an individual patient will show a
positive or negative (or no) response to their feelings of sexual
satisfaction. In other words, the formulas predict who will be
responders to the drugs and who are not. Two drugs for FSIAD have
already been registered for the US market, but the development of
these products is based on a so-called "one-fits-all" approach. Due
to the described approach that has been chosen here, the
effectiveness for the described drugs is on average 3 times higher
(with a low number of negative side effects) than the medicines
that have been developed based on one-fits-all. In short, the
research shows for both developed PPS formulas that they can
reliably predict who will benefit from each of the on-demand drugs
and could therefore be potentially useful in clinical practice.
Copyright 2021 PR Newswire