From cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases to stress and environmental pollution to the growing circulation of pathogens: the scenario that awaits the patient of the future is not lacking in complexity
Humanity is facing an unprecedented demographic explosion, also supported by a marked lengthening of the average life span. The rapidity of communication and migration are a source of cultural homogenization, but also of serious misunderstandings and conflicts. Furthermore, everything is aggravated by the scenario of reduction of food resources due to dramatic climate change. A context that will inevitably impact on what the “patient of the future” will be and on its management. With these concepts opens the Charta of the Symposium 2023 “Medicina dei Sistemi – The Patient of the Future”, elaborated by the leading experts in the sector including Ernesto Burgio, of the European Cancer and Environment Research Institute in Brussels, Stefano Fais, Department of Oncology and Molecular Medicine of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and Alessio Fasano, professor of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School. The initiative is supported by Guna, a 100% made in Italy company specialized in the production of low-dose medicines.
Going into more detail, tomorrow’s patients will increasingly have to deal with non-communicable diseases, i.e. cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, neoplastic, metabolic and progressive degenerative diseases which will be responsible for 74% of deaths, especially in less developed countries. developed and low-income groups. But that’s not all because the progressive worsening of the conditions of the exposome, i.e. the totality of the environmental components to which an individual is exposed throughout his life such as for example food and environmental pollution, and the acceleration to it imprinted by climate change will help to maintain or even increase the prevalence of diseases such as, for example, diabetes and arteriosclerosis. “The patient of the future will increasingly be a biological system at risk of maladaptation, which may progressively lose its intrinsic capacity for robustness and resilience – says Alessandro Pizzoccaro, president and founder of Guna – Another crucial aspect, which will be carefully monitored and managed , is that of inflammation: the patient of the future will be increasingly inflamed, whose multiple comorbidities will recognize their common matrix in this condition”.
Now a question arises: is it possible to face the medical challenges that await us and respond to the needs of the patient of the future? The answer is yes and derives in detail from 4 elements: prevention, predictability, precision and personalization. These, according to industry experts, are and will be the pillars on which to build the Medicine of the Future. “In this articulated context, Low Dose Medicine deserves specific attention, which fully enters Systems Medicine – declares Alessandro Perra, scientific director of Guna – And related to it is Low Dose Pharmacology, characterized by the use of low physiological dosages of biological molecules. The disease as such must be understood and analyzed as an alteration of communication between cells and between the networks in which the cells themselves operate. And precisely for this reason medicine is called to evolve and to consider the patient as a complex system within an environmental network inserted in a social network”.
Perra’s words are followed by more detailed indications and ideas regarding the medicine of the future which will be characterized by a greater application of big data, in order to interpret the patient in his uniqueness. But not only that, the medicine of tomorrow must focus on research and be predictive, precise and ready to integrate several different diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. And again, professionals will have, as a primary objective, that of favoring a preventive approach which envisages ever greater accessibility and efficiency of diagnoses and treatments and which considers treatments with low impact both on the individual and on the environment. Last but not least, the importance of maintaining the patient in low disease activity once brought into remission stands out.
Ten distinctive features of the “Medicine of the Future” according to industry experts:
A medicine that makes use of big data to facilitate the interpretation of the patient’s uniqueness A medicine that knows how to take advantage of the results of research in every field of knowledge without becoming a passive application gymnasium. Medicine that is predictive, but free from predictive anxiety. A Medicine that is precision, but that does not lead to the fragmentation of the patient’s systemic vision in his being a unicuum “body-mind-spirit”. A Medicine that also makes use of the integration between different diagnostic and therapeutic approaches (overlapping), and between different Pharmacologies (synthetic and natural-biological, of high and low doses) and interventions on the person-system such as, for example, those of a psychiatric, physiatric, thermal or movement type. A Medicine that favors a preventive and not just a therapeutic approach and which foresees ever greater accessibility and efficiency of diagnoses and treatments, optimizing the human and economic burden of pharmacological, physical and surgical methods, and also enhancing rehabilitation techniques. A Medicine that provides, for an increasingly chronic patient, with comorbidities, multi-treated and in need of care for their disabilities, low-impact treatments both on the individual microcosm and on the environmental macrocosm through the reduction of the pharmacological burden, the dosages of medicines and concentrations of their active ingredients, also taking advantage of the opportunities offered by Low Dose Medicine. A medicine capable of primary and secondary prevention and capable of acting in the early stages of the disease. A medicine that favors the maintenance of the patient in low disease activity (low disease activity), once brought into remission. A Medicine that considers that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment”.
