Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, India.
J Altern Complement Med. 2013 Apr;19(4):370-5. doi: 10.1089/acm.2011.0698. Epub 2012 Oct 25.
The "omics" era of research has provided vital information on the genetic and biochemical diversity of individuals. This has lead to the emergence of "personalized medicine," wherein one aims to design specific drugs for individual patients or subtypes of patients. Indeed, the ongoing patent wars on this matter, suggest that personalized medicine represents a major goal for today's pharmaceutical industries. Although the concept of personalized medicine is new to modern medicine, it is a well-established concept in Ayurveda, the traditional system of Indian medicine that is still being practiced. Therefore, this article discusses topics that are crucial for the advancement of modern personalized medicine. These topics include disease susceptibility, disease subtypes, and Ayurvedic therapeutics. First, we explain how Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Traditional Korean medicine or Sasang Constitutional medicine; conceptualize disease susceptibility and disease subtypes. Next, we focus on conceptual similarities between molecular medicine and Ayurvedic concepts of disease susceptibility and disease subtypes. For each topic, we explain the relevant experimental evidence reported in the literature. We also propose new hypotheses and suggest experimental approaches for their testing and validation.
“组学”时代的研究为个体的遗传和生化多样性提供了重要信息。这导致了“个性化医学”的出现，即旨在为个别患者或患者亚群设计特定药物。事实上，目前在这个问题上的专利之争表明，个性化医学代表了当今制药行业的一个主要目标。尽管个性化医学的概念对现代医学来说是新的，但它是印度传统医学阿育吠陀的一个既定概念，至今仍在实践中。因此，本文讨论了对现代个性化医学发展至关重要的主题。这些主题包括疾病易感性、疾病亚型和阿育吠陀治疗学。首先，我们解释了阿育吠陀、中医和传统韩国医学或 Sasang 体质医学如何概念化疾病易感性和疾病亚型。接下来，我们专注于分子医学和阿育吠陀疾病易感性和疾病亚型概念之间的相似之处。对于每个主题，我们解释了文献中报道的相关实验证据。我们还提出了新的假设，并为它们的测试和验证提出了实验方法。
