How Personalized Medicine Would Help Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Diagnosis and Therapeutic Intervention

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is the most common fatal neurological disorder which leads to upper and lower motor neuron impairments via neuro-inflammatory and oxidative mechanisms. It has the highest incidence in individualsover 55 years old. Muscle atrophy and spinal cord sclerosis are some of the neuropathological features. No definite therapeutic intervention is known for ALS. Drug therapy is of the classic treatments. Although the outcome of different drugs application on animal modelswere promising, clinical assessments were not approval. Personalized medicine (PM) is about to defines specific and quantifiable biomarkers for ALS in order to facilitate its early diagnosis and help the clinicians to choose the best therapeutic intervention. Scientists have estimatedthat there are some stage-specific biomarkers of ALS , but, unfortunately, we still don’t have enough proven and valid biomarkers. In 2017, for the first time, a study revealed specific MicroRNA (miRNA) variation like miRNA-20, miRNA-143-3p and miRNA-374b-5p inpatients . It was suggested that these serum miRNAs may result from muscle denervation. Scientists suggest that MiRNA serum level may change years before disease onset and miRNA expression persists during disease progression. The implication of this is the possibility thatmiRNAs could be appropriate longitudinal biomarkers to facilitate prognosis, diagnosis and intervention of the disease. In addition, it is newly found that some RNA targeted therapies had noticeable outcome for neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson disease. Hence, it could conceivably be hypothesized that by detecting specific biomarkers and applying that RNA targeted therapies, we would be able to stop disease progression years before the onset of its symptoms. Building upon the above statements, further studies are needed toreveal more specific and trustable biomarkers.