Eli5: what does it mean if “a patient is heterozygous for the Val158Met polymorphism in the catechol-o-methyltransferase gene. They have one copy of the Met allele and one copy of the Val allele”

Question

How would that affect how the patient reacts to medications? Especially stimulants such as adderall, Ritalin, etc.

In: Biology

Answer 1

why i gotta do your ap bio homework though… the valine variant of COMT metabolizes dopamine 4x faster than met and is expressed more than met, so people with val/val and val/met feel less happy than met/met doing the same things.