Alcohol is responsible for more deaths than overdoses from opioids and all other substances combined, yet less than 10% of people with alcohol use disorder receive treatment.
Functional precision medicine works to take the guesswork out of deciding which drug to try next for patients with cancers that don’t respond to standard treatments.
Horses and humans share biological similarities that lead them to suffer from similar endocrine and orthopedic diseases. A number of treatments that work for one species often work for the other.
Medicine works better when the treatments are tailored to fit each individual person’s biology and history. A first step is increasing diversity in clinical trials, but the end goal is precision medicine.
Gregory Way, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Many approved drugs work on the body in ways that researchers still aren’t entirely clear about. Seeing this as an opportunity instead of a flaw may lead to better treatments for complex conditions.
Many doctors currently diagnose skin conditions by eye. Advances in molecular testing could lead to more precise and accurate diagnoses for ambiguous rashes and skin lesions.
Precision medicine is often touted as the future of medicine. But so far, it hasn’t been helpful in the war against COVID-19. Here is how it could be used to tease apart the nuances of the disease.
Clinical trials are used to establish that medicines work. But these don’t take into account the genetic differences between us that can mean very different outcomes for different patients.
Charles Chiu, University of California, San Francisco
Superfast DNA analysis is now being used to crack medical mysteries when physicians can’t figure out whether an infectious microbe is causing the disease.
In an era of rapid technological advance, devastating climate change, increasing inequality and a steadily aging society, health-care leadership development is vital.
Asthma affects around 339 million people worldwide. A new drug promises to lower risks of asthma attack and may eventually allow patients to reduce their dependence on steroids.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Professor of Breast Cancer Research, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation and School of Biomedical Sciences,, Queensland University of Technology