CardioSource World News June 2012 : Page 30
Personalized Medicine: are We There YeT? conducting genetic testing in 1993; by 2005, this number had reached 600, very close to the 612 we have today, according to the NIH’s National Center for Biotechnology Information. The number of diseases for which genetic testing is available has skyrocketed, going from 100 in 1993 to 2,634 now. Although tests are available, we’re still figuring out what to do with most of them and learning which ones hold the most promise for future treatments. Right now the United States spends more than $300 billion per year on pharmaceuticals, but only half of those drugs work as well as anticipated, and some prescriptions prove to be downright dangerous for certain patients. “Our healthcare system is fabulous, but it’s too expensive,” said Dr. Cannon, who envisions that real savings will enter the picture when we can avoid duplication of care, cut re-hospitalization rates, and decentralize care. “Soon, we’ll have more home-monitoring de-vices that will check heart rate and heart rhythm,” Dr. Cannon said. Although a lot of predictions about personalized medicine take on a science-fiction feel, he said the biggest boon will be using n 80-year-old male with Parkinson’s dis-ease landed in the hospital with an infec-tion last month. Soon, he exhibited signs of dementia and experienced hallucinations. It didn’t look good. When Christopher P. Cannon, MD , spoke with the patient’s daughter, he learned what sparked this turn for the worse: a newly prescribed antibiotic. “When the antibiotic was added, it increased Christopher P. the level of one of the Parkin-Cannon, MD son’s medicines and caused a bad side effect. When the antibiotic was stopped, the patient ‘woke up’ and got all better,” said Dr. Can-non, associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. When the promise of personalized medicine be-comes a reality, Dr. Cannon said these unexpected drug-drug interactions will be minimized, patients will receive better and more coordinated care, and healthcare costs will plummet. Dr. Cannon, who is also editor-in-chief of CardioSource WorldNews , a envisions each patient having access to their own personal, medical “cloud.” With each appointment, various healthcare providers will upload informa-tion on all prescriptions, diagnoses, allergies, and drug sensitivities, as well as test results. That way, should you pass out on vacation, the emergency room physician won’t have to live out an episode of TV’s House looking for clues. This brand-new medical world will also allow physicians to use genetic data to determine which drugs will work best and which will cause the least harm, as well as more accurately pinpoint risk factors. But we’re not there yet. So where are we, and where are we headed? One step at a time The first step appears to be gathering informa-tion and then having the technology to process, store, and share the data. Next, according to experts, we must figure out how to capitalize on this information to create diagnostics, followed by treatments and, ultimately, preventive strategies. The amount of information—that first step—is swelling. In fact, there were only 100 laboratories 32 CardioSource WorldNews June 2012
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