The urgent need for data to make personalised medicine equitable
- January 25, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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The urgent need for data to make personalised medicine equitable
Subject: S&T
Section: Biotech
Context:
- Medical research is biased, meaning some would be helped far more than others by genetically informed personalised medicine; there are problems across the clinical trials, ranging from which questions get asked in the first place, to who participates in trials and who gets their genomes sequenced.
Genome Sequencing
- A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.
- Genome sequencing is figuring out the order of DNA nucleotides, or bases, in a genome—the order of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts that make up an organism’s DNA.
- It is a method of isolating and identifying variable elements within the base-pair sequence of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) as it shows high degree of polymorphism (variation) at genetic level.
- Polymorphism forms the basis of genome sequencing since DNA from every tissue (such as blood, hair-follicle, skin, bone, saliva, sperm etc.) from an individual show the same degree of polymorphism.
Precision/personalised Medicine
- Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.
- Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, is a new frontier for healthcare combining genomics, big data analytics, and population health.
- This approach will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in which groups of people.
- It is in contrast to a one-size-fits-all approach, in which disease treatment and prevention strategies are developed for the average person, with less consideration for the differences between individuals.
Global efforts towards Genome Sequencing
India’s efforts towards Genome sequencing
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