Personalised Medicine

Derfuss T Personalized medicine in multiple sclerosis: hope or reality? BMC Med ;10(1):116. [Epub ahead of print]

Personalized treatment is highly desirable in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) because it is an immensely heterogeneous disease. This heterogeneity is seen in both the disease course and the treatment responses. Currently, a combination of clinical features and imaging parameters in MRI is used to classify active/non-active patients and treatment responders/non-responders. Although this classification works on a group level, individual patients often behave differently from the group. Therefore additional biomarkers are needed to provide better indicators for prognosis and treatment response. Basic and clinical research have discovered different promising targets. It is now essential to verify the utility and accuracy of these markers in large, prospectively sampled patient cohorts.

The article is open access so you can all read it. Whilst the concept of personalised medicine is great and if you tailor your treatment to your needs that is surely the way to get best treatment. However how far do we do. If you are getting your own stem cells this could be a very personalised treatment and this is clearly going to significantly add to the cost of treatments, which few will be able to afford. What do you think?

There are many more

18 Jun 2012
I covered the emerging topic of personalised care and the issue of the expert patient and choice. You will see that I have a habit of reusing slides from other talks; this saves time and some of the slides have been developed ...
16 Mar 2012
Personalised Healthcare. Giovannoni & Rhoades. Individualizing treatment goals and interventions for people with MS. Curr Opin Neurol. 2012 Feb;25 Suppl:S20-7. BACKGROUND: The aim of this article is to consider factors ...

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