Progress, Challenges, and Prospects of Research on the Effect of Gene Polymorphisms on Adverse Reactions to Opioids

The abuse of opioids has become one of the most serious concerns in the world. Opioid use can cause serious adverse reactions, including respiratory depression, postoperative nausea and vomiting, itching, and even death. These adverse reactions are also important complications of clinical application of opioid drugs that may affect patient safety and recovery. Due to the fear of adverse reactions of opioids, clinicians often do not dare to use opioids in an adequate or appropriate amount, thus affecting the clinical medication strategy and the quality of treatment for patients. The prediction of adverse reactions to opioids is one of the most concerned problems in clinical practice. At present, the correlation between gene polymorphism and the efficacy of opiates has been widely studied and preliminarily confirmed, but the research on the effect of gene polymorphism on the adverse reactions of opiates is relatively limited. Existing studies have made encouraging progress in predicting the incidence and severity of adverse opioid reactions and clinical management by using genetic testing, but most of these studies are single-center, small-sample clinical studies or animal experiments, which have strong limitations. When the same receptor or enzyme is studied by different experimental methods, different or even opposite conclusions can be drawn. These phenomena indicate that the correlation between gene polymorphism and adverse opioid reaction still needs further research and demonstration. At present, it is still too early to use genetic testing to predict opioid adverse reactions in clinic. In this paper, the correlation between gene polymorphism and adverse opioid reactions and a small number of clinical applications were reviewed in terms of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, in order to provide some suggestions for future research and clinical drug decision making.