@ShahidNShah
Precision Medicine and COVID-19
Precision medicine has been an important goal in healthcare. Researchers have been focused on generating new disease subclassifications to maximise individualised treatment options. There have been many phenotypes, endotypes, and subtypes so that patients who demonstrate specific symptoms and fall into a specific subtype or phenotype can be treated with precision.
The same is true for SARS-CoV-2. To date, more than 60 subtypes have been proposed ranging from simple classification such as the H or L phenotype of COVID-19 related ARDS to groups organised by machine learning methods.
The point of the effort is this: not all SARS-CoV-2 infections are the same. COVID-19 is a complex disease. It is not caused by a single, genetically identical RNA virus. It is an evolving pathogen with mutations and variants. Each variant has a different effect on transmission, antigenicity, and virulence.
Since SARS-CoV-2 is not always the same, some patients have more disease severity and an increased risk of death compared to others. Also, it is important to understand that even the hosts are not the same. They differ in age, gender, and respiratory comorbidity. They have different baseline factors. All these have an impact on the risk, type, and outcome of the infection. Different patients also have different levels of tolerance. This may contribute to the disparate manifestations of COVID-19 among patients who seemingly appear to be quite similar.
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