Among other things, medications such as pain relievers, blood thinners and cholesterol-lowering agents may need to be tailored to better suit patients who carry the gene variant, reports Science Radio.
“We are working to try to understand what the inheritance from the Neanderthals means to us today, and a gene variant we got stuck on is a variant that affects how the body takes care of medicines,” says genetics researcher Hugo Seeberg, who leads the study at Karolinska Institutet.
“Those who should normally take two tablets may instead only take one if you have this Neanderthal variant, otherwise you get too high a dose if the body doesn’t break it down,” says Hugo Seeberg.
Previously, the origin of the gene variant was unknown, but it is now known that it is a legacy from the Neanderthals, who died out around 30,000 years ago.
A fifth of all Europeans today carry the gene variant that causes the body to break down certain drugs up to 70 percent more slowly.