Pharmacogenomics is the study of the effect of an individual’s genetic inheritance, their genome, on the body’s response to drugs. It is a broader study of multiple genes and their alleles, of the entirety of expressed and nonexpressed genes in any given physiological state and how they affect all aspects of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Although the terms pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics are often used interchangeably and are synonymous for all practical purposes, pharmacogenomics uses a genome-wide approach while pharmacogenetics generally focuses on specific interindividual differences.
