POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — In an effort to enhance the efficacy and safety of taking medication, Fruth Pharmacy is offering the Rxight pharmacogenetics program from MD Labs for its patients.

Pharmacogenetics works by leveraging information about an individual patient’s genetic profile in order to select the best medications and dosages, which also helps to mitigate ineffective or possibly adverse drug reactions.

Under the Rxight program, after a patient’s doctor authorizes a lab test, the patient then visits a Fruth Pharmacy to get a cheek swab and to purchase the Rxight test. The Fruth pharmacist gets the results from the lab in about five to seven days.

The patient then goes over the results with a pharmacogenetics-trained Fruth pharmacist during a personalized medication review. The pharmacist then coordinates care with the patient’s prescribing physician.

“This helps explain why some people wind up in an emergency room from taking a drug while others do fine on the same medication,” Lynne Fruth, president of Fruth Pharmacy, said in a statement. “Until recently, drugs have been prescribed hoping that each drug works pretty much the same in everybody, but knowing they don’t. Pharmacogenetics information challenges this one-size-fits-all approach and opens the door to more personalized approaches to prescribing and using medication.”

Fruth Pharmacy operates 29 drug stores in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.