Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Support Group
Atrial fibrillation (AF or afib) is an abnormal heart rhythm (cardiac arrhythmia) which involves the two small, upper heart chambers (the atria). Heart beats in a normal heart begin after electricity generated in the atria by the sinoatrial node spread through the heart and cause contraction of the heart muscle and pumping of blood.
It's well known that a-fibbers respond differently to different drugs:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16872261
This is why it's great to see some research being conducted on candidate genetic explanations for differential responses:
beta-blocker response:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22192668
Flecainide response:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20625396
Unfortunately, in the fine details, it appears that the same genetic change that is favorable for rate control is less favorable for rhythm control! I give up.
Nonetheless, a great area for funding to help prevent those few cases of unsafe anti-arrhthmic drug responses.
-Sean
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16872261
This is why it's great to see some research being conducted on candidate genetic explanations for differential responses:
beta-blocker response:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22192668
Flecainide response:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20625396
Unfortunately, in the fine details, it appears that the same genetic change that is favorable for rate control is less favorable for rhythm control! I give up.
Nonetheless, a great area for funding to help prevent those few cases of unsafe anti-arrhthmic drug responses.
-Sean
Hope we'll see more personalized therapy for A Fib in the future.
D.
Personalized therapy may mean genetic testing and genetic databases. Which also means tagging and tracking. Be careful what you wish for. We have enough of this in the united surveillance states. Gee, I bet this comment just moved me up on the NSA's watch list.
While I share your paranoia; after all growing up in the Bronx how could we not become paranoid, I think the benefits of personalized therapy would outweigh the disadvantages.
For example the CHADS model is the best we got for determining anticoagulation and so people with 0 scores are usually not put on anticoagulants. There have been several people on this forum with 0 scores that got strokes. What if we could add biomarkers to the CHADS risk factors to determine anticoagulation strategies that further reduced the number of strokes.
opsyn
Talk about coincidence or perhaps synchronicity. Two guys who grew up in the Bronx, meeting on an afib forum, both getting ablations in April, and both having worked in IT for over 30 years.
I started out as an IBM 360 assembler language programmer. In fact the moniker opsyn was an old obscure assembler instruction that is upward compatible with z/OS
Anyway I am glad we disagree on this issue so we have at least some differences otherwise I might think you were my brother in a parallel universe since I already have a brother named Paul (not kidding) in this universe.
Anyway I continue to wish you the best of luck on your ablation as I will probably have the same outcome.
opsyn