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Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity

The declared aim of “personalized”, “stratified” or “precision” approaches is to place individual variation, as ascertained through genomic and various other biomarkers, at the heart of Scientific Medicine using it to predict risk of disease or response to therapy and to tailor interventions and tar...

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Autores principales: Hussein, Ayman A., Hamad, Reem, Newport, Melanie J., Ibrahim, Muntaser E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9047898/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35495155
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.853969
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author Hussein, Ayman A.
Hamad, Reem
Newport, Melanie J.
Ibrahim, Muntaser E.
author_facet Hussein, Ayman A.
Hamad, Reem
Newport, Melanie J.
Ibrahim, Muntaser E.
author_sort Hussein, Ayman A.
collection PubMed
description The declared aim of “personalized”, “stratified” or “precision” approaches is to place individual variation, as ascertained through genomic and various other biomarkers, at the heart of Scientific Medicine using it to predict risk of disease or response to therapy and to tailor interventions and target therapies so as to maximize benefit and minimize risk for individual patients and efficiency for the health care system overall. It is often contrasted to current practices for which the scientific base is rooted in concepts of a “universal biology” and a “typical” or “average patient” and in which variation is ignored. Yet both approaches equally overlook the hierarchical nature of human variation and the critical importance of differences between populations. Impact of genetic heterogeneity has to be seen within that context to be meaningful and subsequently useful. In Africa such complexity is compounded by the high effective size of its populations, their diverse histories and the diversity of the environmental terrains they occupy, rendering analysis of gene environment interactions including the establishment of phenotype genotype correlations even more cumbersome. Henceforth “Individualized” methods and approaches can only magnify the shortcomings of universal approaches if adopted without due regard to these complexities. In the current perspective we review examples of potential hurdles that may confront biomedical scientists and analysts in genomic medicine in clinical and public health genomics in Africa citing specific examples from the current SARS-COV2 pandemic and the challenges of establishing reference biobanks and pharmacogenomics reference values.
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spelling pubmed-90478982022-04-29 Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity Hussein, Ayman A. Hamad, Reem Newport, Melanie J. Ibrahim, Muntaser E. Front Genet Genetics The declared aim of “personalized”, “stratified” or “precision” approaches is to place individual variation, as ascertained through genomic and various other biomarkers, at the heart of Scientific Medicine using it to predict risk of disease or response to therapy and to tailor interventions and target therapies so as to maximize benefit and minimize risk for individual patients and efficiency for the health care system overall. It is often contrasted to current practices for which the scientific base is rooted in concepts of a “universal biology” and a “typical” or “average patient” and in which variation is ignored. Yet both approaches equally overlook the hierarchical nature of human variation and the critical importance of differences between populations. Impact of genetic heterogeneity has to be seen within that context to be meaningful and subsequently useful. In Africa such complexity is compounded by the high effective size of its populations, their diverse histories and the diversity of the environmental terrains they occupy, rendering analysis of gene environment interactions including the establishment of phenotype genotype correlations even more cumbersome. Henceforth “Individualized” methods and approaches can only magnify the shortcomings of universal approaches if adopted without due regard to these complexities. In the current perspective we review examples of potential hurdles that may confront biomedical scientists and analysts in genomic medicine in clinical and public health genomics in Africa citing specific examples from the current SARS-COV2 pandemic and the challenges of establishing reference biobanks and pharmacogenomics reference values. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9047898/ /pubmed/35495155 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.853969 Text en Copyright © 2022 Hussein, Hamad, Newport and Ibrahim. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Genetics
Hussein, Ayman A.
Hamad, Reem
Newport, Melanie J.
Ibrahim, Muntaser E.
Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity
title Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity
title_full Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity
title_fullStr Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity
title_full_unstemmed Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity
title_short Individualized Medicine in Africa: Bringing the Practice Into the Realms of Population Heterogeneity
title_sort individualized medicine in africa: bringing the practice into the realms of population heterogeneity
topic Genetics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9047898/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35495155
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.853969
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