K.K. Jain, Textbook of Personalized Medicine, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-2553-7_11, 383
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Chapter 11
Personalized Management of Infectious
Diseases
Introduction
Personalized approach involves selection of an appropriate treatment right from the
start for optimal effectiveness and for reduction of development of drug resistance.
Advances in point-of-care (POC) diagnostics have enable physicians to avoid dis-
pensing antibiotics for viral infections and fevers of unknown origin. Improved
diagnostics can enable prescriptions according to a pathogen’s susceptibilities.
Similar to the concept of personalized medicine based on patients’ genetic differ-
ences, treatment of infectious diseases involves individualizing therapy according to
genetic differences in infectious agents. Various examples of personalized manage-
ment antimicrobial therapeutics are given, antibacterial as well as antiviral.
Personalized Management of Bacterial Infections
Bacterial Genomics and Sequencing
Sequencing has been employed extensively for the study of bacterial genomics (Jain
2015b ). Some examples of the role of sequencing in the personalized management
of bacterial infections are given here.
Pyrosequencing of Microbial Flora in Leg Ulcers
Approximately 1 out of every 100 individuals has some form of venous insuffi ciency,
which can lead to chronic venous disease and venous leg ulcer (VLU). There are
known underlying pathologies which contribute to the chronic nature of VLU includ-
ing biofi lm phenotype infections. Pyrosequencing based approaches have been
used to evaluate VLU to characterize their microbial ecology (Wolcott et al. 2009 ).