December 12, 2007
Two recent commentaries from Jim Evans and Howard McLeod in the journals JAMA and American Family Physician address the emerging promise of the application of individualized therapy and the challenges to the healthcare system that accompany these advances.
The timely commentary from Jim Evans in the December 12 issue of JAMA discusses the promise of individualized medicine in the context of restructuring the current healthcare system to grapple with the unique challenges and benefits presented by the advent of individual genetic knowledge. Evans posits that the new technologies being developed and tailoring of healthcare to the individual provide a natural stimulus for pursuing universal coverage and shared risk, already a heated topic of debate.
In the October 12 issue of American Family Physician, Howard McLeod reviews the status of pharmacogenetics, which is defined as the interaction between genotype and drug therapy. Because genotype is known to account for a large component of individual variability in drug responsiveness and current technologies allow for large scale genome-wide approaches, this area of research has expanded rapidly. The field has identified several clear cut examples of genetic variations that impact efficacy of drug treatments. Testing for some variants is currently available with the promise of more discoveries leading to more effective treatments and guidelines in the near future.
To view the articles visit the following links: