Genetic Counselling & Personalised Medicine
Genetic counselling
- Genetic screening can leave a patient or parent with many questions
- Genetic counsellors are commonly used to help individuals understand and process their results
- The counsellors will read out the results and explain what they mean
- Counsellors can also be seen before a screening has occurred to inform an individual of the possible results
- They may discuss the following with a patient:
- The chances of the individual developing an inherited disease
- The lifestyle changes that can be made to reduce or manage the risk of developing the disease
- Therapeutic treatments possible for the patient
- The chance of an individual having a child with a certain disease
- Termination of a pregnancy
- Financial implications of having a child with severe disabilities
- Ethical issues
Personalised medicine
- Personalised medicine involves the development of more targeted drugs to treat a variety of human diseases as well as the development of synthetic tissues
- Information gathered from genome projects like the Human Genome Project (HGP) can be used to develop genomic medicine
- Genomic medicine uses information about an individuals genes to influence their clinical care
- Genetic screening allows for individuals with a high chance of developing specific diseases to be identified and for preventative measures or precautions to be taken