Genotype Guided Versus Conventional Approach in Selection of Oral P2Y12 Receptor Blocker in Chinese Patients Suffering From Acute Coronary Syndrome

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a disease with high mortality, morbidity and economic burden. Usually, it is caused by ischemic heart disease and atherosclerotic plaque rupture in the coronary arteries causing platelet activation, aggregation and thrombus formation. For decades, antiplatelet agents are the cornerstones of management of ACS and dual antiplatelet therapy with aspirin and P2Y12 receptor blocker are standard of care for patients with ACS with or without percutaneous coronary intervention. However, increasing evidence has shown that clopidogrel, which is a type of thienopyridine, has wide inter-individual variability in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic actions which lead to suboptimal antiplatelet effect especially in Asian population. Cytochrome P450 2C19 is an important enzyme for thienopyridine metabolism and genetic polymorphisms of CYP2C19 have been demonstrated to be associated with clopidogrel resistance and ischemic event post percutaneous coronary intervention (1-3). The prevalence of the LOF allele of CYP2C19 is higher in Chinese than in Caucasians (4) and it may lead to the higher degree of clopidogrel resistance in Chinese patients as documented in our previous study (5) and study from another Asian country (6) In view of the potential limitations of clopidogrel in ACS treatment, American and European guidelines recommend use of newer P2Y12 blockers such as ticagrelor (7) for ACS patients. Though these agents have better anti-ischemic effect, they are associated with increased bleeding risk especially in Chinese patients whom are considered to be more prone to bleeding complications. As a result, local physicians are reluctant in using these potent antiplatelet agents despite their proven clinical efficacy in Caucasian studies. Evidence has shown the correlation between CYP2C19 genotype, platelet reactivity, clinical outcome and currently CYP2C19 genotype is an emerging target in the pharmacogenomic approach in guiding the use of antiplatelet agents. With the advent of rapid genotyping technologies (8), it is anticipated that the appropriate drug can be given to the appropriate patient. Verigene (Nanosphere, Northbrook, IL) is an FDA approved microarray-based genotyping assay for the rapid detection of cytochrome P450 2C19 polymorphisms from whole blood using nanoparticle probes. It utilises whole blood for detection of single nucleotide polymorphism and the results will be available in 2-4 hours. With proper training and handling, the accuracy is expected to be \>99%. (9, 10)