the premise that an individual’s unique genetic and physiologic characteristics play
a major role in predisposition to certain diseases and also in response to specific
therapies. Personalized medicine thus can be defined as the interdisciplinary
approach trying to integrate data from a person’s genetic profile, epigenetic mod-
ifications, environmental exposures, clinical symptoms, and biomarker changes to
achieve greater accuracy in the prediction of disease susceptibility and diagnosis
and to optimize the individual, personalized therapy.^1
For the diseases and disorders of the nervous system, personalized approach is
still quite remote due to our often incomplete knowledge of genetic, molecular, and
cellular mechanisms underlying their etiopathogenesis. Due to that shortage, most
of the diseases and disorders of the nervous system, such as mental illness or
neurodegenerative disorders, are still incurable or with deficient treatments. Pre-
cisely because of this, the great efforts are made in recent years to understand the
genetics and molecular mechanisms involved in the etiology and pathology of the
major diseases and disorders of the central nervous system (CNS) so as to set up the
base for new, more effective, personalized treatments. It is believed that personal-
ized treatments should markedly reduce the morbidity and mortality in this field.^2
Indeed, the mental diseases and neurological conditions represent the major disease
burden nowadays in terms of mortality, disability, productivity loss, and health care
costs.^3 For example, in 2008, the World Health Organization estimated that brain
disorders account for about 13 % of the global disease burden, a greater burden than
cardiovascular diseases and cancer.^4 The World Mental Health Survey, published
in 2008 and covering 28 countries, estimated that one in three adults suffers from a
mental disorder.^5 In Europe, disorders of the brain contribute 26.6 % of the total all
cause burden, thus a greater proportion as compared to other regions of the world.^6
In particular, the mental disorders affect 38.2 % of population every year, which
means 164.8 million people, with low treatment rates, delayed treatment provision,
and grossly inadequate treatment.^7 The true size of disorders of the CNS is even
considerably larger if we include those cases that do not receive any treatment (for
exp. approximately one-third of all cases of mental diseases receive no treatment)
and if we include spinal cord and brain injuries.^8
Thus, the field of CNS diseases and disorders is very wide and covers many very
different conditions, which are all unique in their genetic, molecular, and patho-
logical characteristics, and each would deserve to be considered for the personal-
ized approaches in their prediction, diagnosis, and therapy. Here we will discuss
(^1) Ozomaro et al. ( 2013 ).
(^2) Ozomaro et al. ( 2013 ).
(^3) Smith ( 2011 ) and Wittchen et al. ( 2011 ).
(^4) World Health Organization ( 2008 ).
(^5) Kessler and Ustun ( 2008 ).
(^6) Wittchen et al. ( 2011 ).
(^7) Wittchen et al. ( 2011 ).
(^8) Wittchen et al. ( 2011 ), Lee et al. ( 2014 ), and New et al. ( 2014 ).
242 M.M. Pejatovic ́and S. Anzic ́