Part of the process of discovering what medications work for which people is when doctors first accept that a medication simply won’t work for certain people. This can be tricky as many may have a vested interest in a certain drug or be unwilling to see it fail. There are all sorts of factors which can make a person less susceptible to standard treatment and it’s becoming more and more clear that genetics have a lot to do with it.
A drug called Salmeterol is used to treat asthma and for a large proportion of children it’s very effective, unfortunately for others it can make the condition much worse. It’s taken a long time to work out why this is and in doing so they’ve opened up lots of new avenues for treatment. It’s a certain genetic marker which predisposes people towards Salmeterol’s ineffectiveness and it’s that same marker which makes a newer treatment, Montelukast, much more effective for those people.
This is a great way of illustrating just how all knowledge is good knowledge. Without the realisation thousands of children would still be treated with medication which was slowly making their asthma worse, now they’re getting effective treatment and all thanks to the smallest addition to our knowledge base!