Personalized medicine in psoriasis: concept and applications.

ABSTRACT

Personalized medicine is a new treatment modality where patients are the center of interest. Thus, one drug does not fit all; rather we look for a drug which fits the individual patients' disease. Treatment is moving towards molecular medicine driven by the growing knowledge and understanding of pharmacogenetics. Psoriasis is a common dermatological disease characterized by genetic polymorphism. The association of biomarkers and psoriasis is helpful to evaluate susceptibility to the disease, its severity and its progression. Additionally, the response to treatment will be anticipated. The growing expenses of health care systems worldwide are primarily due to increasing costs of chronic disease management. Hence, activation of preventive medicine will minimize treatment costs. A revolution in treatment modalities is expected to start at the level of pharmaceutical companies, as personalization of medicine will decrease the cost of clinical trials by minimizing the number of subjects required. In turn, this will decrease the cost of developing new medications. My vision for the future is that personalized medicine will mandate special physicians capable of understanding molecular medicine and using genetics and biomarkers for diagnosis, evaluation of the effect of drugs and overall prognosis. This new therapeutic modality will need special training.