Opioid-Related Pharmacogenomic Variants in a Retrospective Cohort of High-Risk Hospitalized Infants.

Abstract

To evaluate the prevalence of opioid-related pharmacogenomic (PGx) variants in high-risk hospitalized infants and to compare these frequencies with broader genetic cohorts to assess implications for precision opioid prescribing. This retrospective cohort study included infants <1 year of age with high-risk conditions treated at a quaternary children's hospital between 2009 and 2020 who underwent exome sequencing. Variants associated with opioid response (COMT, DRD2/ANKK1, ABCB1, OPRM1, CYP2B6, and CYP2D6) were identified, and frequencies were compared with the Ensembl genomic database using chi-square and Fisher exact tests. Among 111 high-risk infants (62.2% male, 47.7% Hispanic/Latino, 18.0% born prematurely, and 82.0% with congenital heart disease), 68.2% underwent surgery. Overall, 81.1% of infants were homozygous for at least 1 opioid-related PGx variant. Compared with Ensembl data, infants in our cohort had a significantly higher frequency of homozygosity for ABCB1: rs1045642 (43.6% vs 18.7%, P < .001) and rs2032582 (42.7% vs 15.9%, P < .001) and a lower frequency of homozygosity for COMT: rs4818 (2.7% vs 10.3%, P < .001) and OPRM1: rs1799971 (2.7% vs 7.1%, P < .001). All infants with surgical necrotizing enterocolitis (n = 5) were homozygous for at least 1 opioid-related variant. The most common metabolizer phenotypes were intermediate (CYP2B6: 35.5%, CYP2D6: 20.0%) and normal (CYP2B6: 53.9%, CYP2D6: 70.9%). In our cohort, most infants carried at least 1 opioid-related PGx variant, with frequencies differing significantly from broader genetic cohorts. These findings highlight the potential of PGx-guided opioid prescribing to optimize pain management and reduce adverse effects in this population. Larger studies incorporating intronic PGx variants and ancestrally comparable controls are needed to validate these findings and evaluate clinical implications.