Warfarin is a powerful blood thinner and a leading drug for cardiovascular disease worldwide. But in South Africa, it is among the top four drug varieties leading to hospitalisation from adverse drug reactions. It’s reasonable to suppose that the drug has similar problematic effects farther across sub-Saharan Africa, though the national data needed to show it are lacking.
The fact that warfarin is riskier in some populations than others isn’t a surprise. Different geographic regions tend to host people with slightly different genetic makeups, and sometimes those genetic differences lead to radically different reactions to drugs. For certain people, a higher dosage of warfarin is fine; for others, it’s dangerous. Researchers have known this for decades.
