title: Psychopharmacologic considerations in the treatment of black American populations.
abstract: Although striking ethnic differences in pharmacologic responses to various medications have been documented in the general medical literature, there is a paucity of such information in the psychopharmacologic literature. Recent work has provided a number of studies that illustrate interesting inter-ethnic pharmacogenetic, pharmacokinetic, and pharmacodynamic differences. In general, however, such studies have reported inconsistent findings relative to dose response relationships with various psychotropics. Results of our literature review, with a particular focus on black Americans, suggest that the lack of consistency in these investigations is largely attributable to various methodological and design problems. Prominent among these problems are: diagnostic misclassification, treatment of various ethnic groups in a homogeneous undifferentiated manner, lack of appropriate control for age and gender, and minimal consideration for chronicity of illness. As a result, though there exist some interesting data suggesting inter-ethnic genetic and kinetic differences, the extant literature on black Americans and other ethnic groups should be evaluated with some caution. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of the existing psychopharmacologic literature on the black American population.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, CA 90059.
authors.forename: T L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Strickland
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ranganath
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Poland
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mendoza
authors.forename: M W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American; D006801:Humans; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000493:pharmacokinetics* / Q000494:pharmacology*; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D011619:Psychotropic Drugs