Pharmacogenomics is defined as an interdisciplinary study which investigates to what extend and in which ways is drug response determined by individuals genetic sequence, promising personalisation of drug therapy on the basis of understanding patient´s genotype. Several issues have precluded integration of pharmacogenomic testing to standard clinical practice, including multiple ethical issues.The purpose of our research was to evaluate how concerned are Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, and Faculty of Medicine, University of Maribor, pedagogical workers´ (hereinafter »respondents«) about the ethical issues of pharmacogenomics. We have prepared an overview of ethical issues of pharmacogenomics by carrying out a systematic review of relevant publications, available on the PubMed database. 32 ethical issues of pharmacogenomics were identified and analysed using ethical principles of autonomy, nonmaleficience, justice and utility. 22 issues were used to design a web-based questionnaire. Respondents were asked to rate level of their agreement with content of the issues representing a concerning ethical problem, using 4-item rating scale. Teachers, assistants and junior researchers were invited to participate in our research. We have obtained 102 responses from the respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics analysis of survey results was performed using SPSS, version 22. We can conclude that respondents perceive the majority of the topics addressed by our questionnaire as concerning or somewhat concerning ethical issues. We have observed highest average response and thus strongest agreement with content of the issue representing a concerning ethical problem in connection to topics that addressed: direct-to-consumer pharmacogenomic testing (average response 3,74), infringement of pharmacogenomic information privacy (average response 3,58), programmes of compulsory pharmacogenomic testing (average response 3,42), discrimination in health insurance and employment due to unfavourable pharmacogenomics test results (average response 3,28) and pharmacogenomic testing of children (average respons 3,25). Statistical analysis revealed differences in responses to several questions between groups of respondents indentified in terms of gender, age, faculty and dealing with genetics or genetics-related fields of study. We can conclude that the differences in responses between such groups are small. We have observed trend in our data indicating that female respondents, older respondents, respondents that work at faculties of medicine and respondents who do not or only partly deal with genetics or genetics-related fields of study in the context of their profession perceive the topics addressed by our questionnaire as more concerning ethical issues.
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