Genes, the environment and personalized medicine: We need to harness both environmental and genetic data to maximize personal and population health
| Autor: | Tim K. Takaro, Mandy Pui, Christopher Carlsten, Fiona S. L. Brinkman, Michael Brauer, Kelly M. McNagny, Jeffrey R. Brook, Diana Royce, Judah A. Denburg, Denise Daley |
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| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
medicine.medical_specialty
Population ageing media_common.quotation_subject Population health Disease Environment Biochemistry Panacea (medicine) Health care Genetics medicine Humans Quality (business) Genetic Predisposition to Disease Precision Medicine Molecular Biology Science & Society media_common business.industry Public health Research Risk analysis (engineering) Genes Gene-Environment Interaction Personalized medicine business |
| Zdroj: | EMBO reports. 15(7) |
| ISSN: | 1469-3178 |
| Popis: | The brave new world envisioned by proponents of personalized medicine has attracted considerable interest and investment during the past decade or so. The excitement is understandable because personalized medicine promises to drastically improve individual health and make more efficient use of existing resources, changing both health care and public health for the better. Improved use of resources is becoming particularly important, as many national healthcare schemes are straining to maintain affordable health care of acceptable quality under the combined pressures of rising costs, an aging population and the increasing prevalence of many chronic and common diseases. Although not a panacea for all these problems, personalized medicine could theoretically reduce healthcare costs, as an individual’s genetic or other biological information could be used to make better or earlier diagnoses of disease, apply cheaper, preventive measures to decrease disease risk, and make more efficient use of therapeutic options. However, there remains a considerable gap between theory and reality, and we think that the prevailing focus on an individual’s genes and biology insufficiently incorporates the important role of environmental factors in disease etiology and health. Including these factors in our approach to personalized medicine and population health should bring that theory closer to reality. However, it will require a fundamental change to the current research agenda and public health policies to emphasize the role of the social and physical environments and related epigenetic changes. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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