1. ¹Brown Medical School–Community Health, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2. ²VA Medical Center and Rhode Island Hospital–Dermatology, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Correspondence: Dr Kate Lapane, Brown Medical School–Community Health, 121 South Main Street, Room 225, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA. E-mail: Kate_Lapane@brown.edu

Abstract

Ovid and many physicians in the thousands of years since have been stymied by the large interindividual variability in drug response and toxicity. That all patients do not reap the same benefits from the same drugs is well established. In the case of statins, estimates of effectiveness range from 30 to 70% of users (Spear et al., 2001). Disentangling why this occurs is complex, and two new disciplines are likely to make headway in furthering our understanding of these phenomena.