cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3731915
Over the past 2 decades I’ve been trying various medications to help me w/ my long running major depression & crippling ADHD. And none have seemed to work.
Recently, the doctor I’m working w/ nowadays suggested that she’s practically running out of options to offer me & that I should take a pharmacogenetics test to help her figure out what should she prescribe.
I took the (expensive) test and the results were eye-opening! The results came out a couple of weeks later w/ a detailed list of some few hundreds medications of various sorts (from pain killers to blood pressure control) along w/ their efficacy for my case. The physician’s version also included a list of suggestions and alternatives for each medicine.
In my particular case, it essentially indicated that any medication that I had tried before was supposed to be either useless or to have limited impact on my body. That part is true.
Please note that I’ve only started a new set of prescriptions since a couple of weeks ago and as such can’t really vouch for the accuracy of the suggestions.
I struggled a lot w/ myself to post something this personal. But I thought maybe there are people out there who’ve got no idea such tests exist and it might turn out to be helpful to some.
A few years back during a grueling med search I pestered my shrink for a CYP2D6 genetic test and sure enough I’m a non-metabolizer … it’s played into a number of med decisions since then.
So what drugs had you tried, and what are you taking now?
Also, how expensive was the test?
For me, adderall helps, but I don’t know how much I should expect from a drug and how much I just have to get better habits. Plus, adderall is short acting, and I’d like to use one of the round-the-clock options if they’d work for me. Obviously, it’s preferable to not spend a long time figuring out which other options might also work for me.
Oh and it cost me around $600 which is not covered by insuranoe.
For ADHD in particular, I’ve tried Adderall/Vivance, Ritalin/Concerta, Atomextetin and couple of others whose name I forgot.
Based on the suggestions of the report I have started taking Guanfacine/Intuniv.
Thank you for posting something this personal. These communities (as a former reddit user) have been incredibly helpful to me thru stories just like this. If we can get them self-sustaining on Lemmy they will help a lot of others.
Back to topic, I’ve not done an extensive pharmacogenetic test, but I did take one to confirm that I’m a CYP2D6 poor metabolizer, which has a huge effect on function of something like 25% of all drugs in existence! It’s definitely informed my treatment since getting that information.
Edit: haha, speaking of ADHD I left a shorter version of this comment 2 months ago. the more the merrier…