La medicina personalizzata: dalle radici storiche al futuro postgenomico

[Autom. eng. transl.] The authors deal with the birth of personalized medicine starting from Hippocrates and Galen, for which it was known that individuals were different from each other, just as the responses to therapies were different. Today the concept of interindividual variability can be studied not only through the phenotypic characteristics (external) but also and above all through the genotypic characteristics: the variability among individuals is genetically determined. For centuries, doctors and scientists have struggled to find the causes of these differences. The discovery of the DNA molecule and the knowledge of its sequence in humans makes it possible today to study the inter-individual variability where it resides: in the genome. Galen had already understood that the basis of all human pathologies existed both "the predisposition of the body itself", which today we know to be represented by genes, and the "external factors" represented by environmental effects. We cannot explain the origins of a pathology if we analyze only the genetic component or only the environmental component. In conclusion, the authors emphasize that personalized medicine should look at the patient not only in its biological uniqueness but also in its human nature (the experience of the disease).