K.K. Jain, Textbook of Personalized Medicine, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-2553-7_12,^409
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Chapter 12
Personalized Management of Neurological
Disorders
Introduction
The general principles of personalized medicine apply to neurological disorders and
this may be referred to as personalized neurology (Jain 2005 ). Role of omics in the
development of personalized neurology will be described in the following sections.
Neurogenomics is an important basis but “genomic neurology” is not an appropriate
synonym for personalized neurology in the same way as genomic medicine is not a
synonym for personalized medicine as pointed out in Chap. 1. Combination of
genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic approaches may yield novel insights into
molecular mechanisms of disease pathophysiology, which could then be integrated
and translated into clinical neurology (Gotovac et al. 2014 ). Personalized medicine
existed long before the advent of genomic age and non-genomic factors are also
taken into consideration in personalizing therapy.
Neurogenomics
Approximately 80 % of the ~19,000 human genes are expressed in the brain, and
5,000 of these exclusively in the brain and not in other organs. Neurogenomics is the
study of genes in the nervous system. Of particular interest in neurology are the genes
involved in neurologic disorders. In a broad sense, neurogenomics is the study of how
the genome as a whole contributes to the evolution, development, structure, and func-
tion of the nervous system. The closely related term “neurogenetics” deals with the
role of genetics in development and function of the nervous system as well as inves-
tigation and management of genetic disorders of the nervous system. Neurogenomics
has applications in basic research, pharmaceutical industry, and in the management of
neurological disorders. Many of the methods used in neurogenomics are the same as
those used for genomics in general and are described in another publication by the
author (Jain 2015c ). Sequencing is the most important activity in this area.
Relationships of neurogenomics with other omics are shown in Fig. 12.1.