Personalized medicine seeks to create an individualized understanding of health and diseases based on genetic patterns. Critics contend, however, that personalized medicine will lead physicians further away from providing truly person-centric care.
Recent advances in DNA sequencing, pharmacogenetic tests and imaging protocols have revealed significant individual variations in disease processes. Therefore, treatment, monitoring or prevention strategies must be tailored specifically to each person’s profile.
Genetics
Personalized medicine is an emerging form of treatment that tailors medications, surgical procedures and therapies specifically to a person’s genetic makeup or cell characteristics. This trend is being propelled forward by cost-effective screening technologies as well as greater understanding of genetics’ effect on health outcomes.
Before the Human Genome Project sequenced over three billion bases of DNA in the 1990s, it was difficult to pinpoint which genes caused specific conditions, like cystic fibrosis or haemophilia. Now scientists have access to tools they need in order to pinpoint these genes and understand how they function within our bodies.
Scientists at U of U Health are using these discoveries to further personalized medicine. For instance, they’re investigating how genetic inheritance patterns influence how different medicines are received by their target patients – a field known as pharmacogenomics. Bogunovic notes that such research could enable doctors to pinpoint which medicines will work best based on an individual’s specific genetic makeup and immune system responses.
Environment
Personalized medicine uses an individual’s genetics, diet, environment and lifestyle factors to prevent, diagnose and treat illness. This approach has made significant strides towards fighting certain cancers like melanoma through immunotherapy treatments that enable their own immune systems to detect and eliminate cancerous cells more efficiently.
As researchers uncover genetic variants linked to certain diseases, more ethical concerns remain. These include how best to protect privacy; whether genomic information can discriminate against certain individuals; and whether data will be utilized appropriately within medical practice.
At present, genomic research is predominantly performed on populations of European descent, leaving many racial and ethnic minority groups underrepresented. This uneven representation could impact algorithms used for making decisions about drug selection and dosage; potentially leading to ineffective treatments or even harmful outcomes for patients whose genomes differ from more thoroughly examined groups.
Lifestyle
Researchers across the nation are conducting studies that aim to create an individualized approach to disease prevention and treatment known as personalized medicine, taking into account an individual’s genetics, environment, diet, specifics of their disease presentation as well as living circumstances when crafting treatment plans.
An increased family history of hereditary colorectal cancer can prompt physicians to recommend genetic screening, as the results can help identify causative mutations and determine if any patient would benefit from preventative measures, such as more frequent colonoscopies.
Personalized medicine has many definitions. Some view it as using genomic and other “omic” technologies to predict drug response and tailor medication regimens accordingly, enabling doctors to tailor prescription specifically to each patient. Others see personalized medicine more broadly – an approach which uses knowledge from various fields to make treatments better tailored for individuals – or see it as something achievable only through advances in science.
Genetic Testing
Your DNA contains information vital for controlling how your body operates, and genetic testing allows us to explore this in depth in order to detect any genetic alterations which could potentially cause disease.
There are various kinds of genetic tests, each targeting various areas of your genome or seeking out gene mutations linked with specific conditions.
Newborn screening is one of the most commonly performed genetic tests. Babies can be tested for various diseases that could threaten them at birth and treated early to either prevent further disease progression or at least lessen its impact.
Predictive and presymptomatic genetic tests can identify genetic mutations that increase your risk for diseases with known genetic components, such as hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Pharmacogenetic tests analyze your genetic makeup in order to predict how you’ll react to certain drugs; their aim being prescribing appropriate medication in appropriate quantities in order to help prevent or treat medical issues before they arise.
