Precision medicine requires a different type of clinical trial that focuses on individual, not average, responses to therapy, says Nicholas J. Schork.
Every day, millions of people are taking medications that will not help them. The top ten highest-grossing drugs in the United States help between 1 in 25 and 1 in 4 of the people who take them (see 'Imprecision medicine' ). For some drugs, such as statins — routinely used to lower cholesterol — as few as 1 in 50 may benefit. There are even drugs that are harmful to certain ethnic groups because of the bias towards white Western participants in classical clinical trials.
Recognition that physicians need to take individual variability into account is driving huge interest in 'precision' medicine. In January, US President Barack Obama announced a US$215-million national Precision Medicine Initiative. This includes, among other things, the establishment of a national database of the genetic and other data of one million people in the United States.
http://www.nature.com/news/personalized-medicine-time-for-one-person-trials-1.17411
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Monday May 04 2015, @03:31AM
Isn't this what happens to every psychiatric patient? The doc prescribes something, and the patient has to let him know if it works. Even if a med is well-known to treat a specific condition the dosing must be set optimally for the patient, and cannot be known to negatively mix with other drugs the patient takes.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @05:28AM
Yes.
Really that is all to say. It already happens. It is required. That's it. Maybe the news is that there is desire to do it in other categories? Seems highly unlikely that doctors don't do that too.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 04 2015, @03:58PM
Isn't his how we deal with all medicine? If you are taking a Statin for cholesterol do you not get bloodwrok done before and after to make sure it is working?
I know I did....