Personalized Medicine Essay Example for Free
The medical field especially the medical dispensation and pharmaceutical have undergone through great dynamics. Personalized medicine is a form of medical provision at the individual level aimed at optimizing on the patient therapeutic and preventative care . This paper therefore addresses the scope of personalized medicine from the actual definition, its benefits, as well as the limitations and the setback to this technology.
Personalized Medicine Defined
Personalized medicine is a form of therapeutic or preventive care which emphasizes on the customization of an individual healthcare requirement. The process of personalized medication involves a through understanding of an individual personal health, history as well as the genetic make up. A medical care program me is then developed to suit to the specific needs of the patient depending on the outcome of the patient’s medical background analysis. In other words personalized medicine is a form of medication which puts special consideration on individual differences of persons and puts special emphasis on the objectives of attaining specific health needs of a patient.
Initially, personalized medicine involved the analysis of the history of the patient, the living environment subjected to, the behaviors the social circumstances to tailor the health care of an individual. Currently, personalized medicine involves a more advanced molecular technology. The technology involves genetic testing, metabolic analysis and proteomic proofing. The personalized medicine development ensures that a companion diagnostic is developed and molecular assays used to stratify the status of a disease, prepare the appropriate dosage for the patient as per the needs and adopting the appropriate medication as per the clients specification. The molecular assays include some proteins and genes which are specific to the condition of the patient’s disease. Personalized treatments include those used in the treatment of cancer such as breast and colorectal cancer.
Specific Examples of the Benefits of Personalized Medicine
Personalized medicine has one of its greatest applications in oncology . It is a field of medicine classifies tumors and their subtypes depending on pathologic and anatomic findings.  It involves histological tests on tumor specimens from patients to asses for markers and the possible treatment. Personalized treatment was adopted a long time ago in this field molecular test for global gene, protein which can indicate somatic mutations in cancer patients. This approach therefore gives a suitable means of diagnosing cancer and predicting the suitable medication .
The study of genetic and the aspect of personalized medicine enable medics to effectively study the hereditary cancer risk. Â Â Examples of personalized cancer medication include:
Research through personalized medicine has indicated that urine from human can be used to predict how individual metabolization of drugs such as acetaminophen (paracetamol) occurs. In the research individuals with high predose urinary levels of p-cresol sulfate, had low post dose urinary ratios of acetaminophen sulfate to acetaminophen (Jain, 2009).
Personalized medicine is also being put into research tests in the fields of Translational Research which is termed as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. This field enables the study of the contribution of genes, proteins, and metabolic pathways to human physiology and variations. Through these pathways disease susceptibility can increase and the medication provides a suitable tool to avert this trend by bringing new approaches to diagnosis, drug development, and individualized therapy.
Drawbacks and limitations
Personalized medicine is an approach to medical care that is deemed to impact more positively in terms of medical provision but a few limitation and drawback have hindered this progress. The limitation range from constrained finances, lack of adequate equipments to a few numbers of effectively trained personnel.
Lack of financial support to cater for this service is the greatest set back to personalized medicine. This is due to the fact that this type of medication requires great expertise and skills. The medication also requires that medical facility be equipped with the appropriate equipments such as the polymerase chain reaction machine for genetical analysis of individuals. Adequate personnel to carry out these medical examinations have also been few and therefore hindering the application of this service to a large number of people.