“We have a great need for training”

land of “great” genetic and pharmacogenetic progress that have accumulated over the past decade to create “tools” that translate their benefits into daily clinical practice, avoiding prescribing errors and advancing changes in “environmental factors” which prevent the manifestation of the disease. This is the role that primary care “must” play in the face of genetic progress, which is “already a reality” and which the family doctor must “coordinate”, as stated at the 44th National Congress of the Spanish Society of Physicians primary care. Main (Semergen)

“We have to believe in it. Personalized medicine is not something of the future, it is already a reality andWe have a great need to start a family because until now we have not received it, neither in the undergraduate nor in the postgraduate. Furthermore, we need to explore and translate findings into tools for everyday clinical work. We cannot lose sight of the patient as to be unique but involved in his biopsychosocial milieu and its environmental factors”, details Enrique José Gamero de Luna, Coordinator of Semergen’s Personalized Genomic Medicine and Rare Disease Working Group.

For Gamero de Luna, Primary Care is faced with the possibility of including a “A new approach to the treatment and prevention of diseases which takes into account the individual variability of each person’s genes, environment and lifestyle”.

In this sense, the specialist understands that the Family is faced with a “new paradigm”. “It’s about approaching disease based on its molecular underpinnings. Health care needs depend more on their specific characteristics than on the type of illness. After all, this means an active role for the individual in his health,” explains Gamero de Luna.

Why should the family be formed in a genetic aspect?

For Angel Caracedo Alvarez, Director of the Xenotic Medicine Foundation (Sergas), Biogenetics should be coordinated by the elementary school. “When diagnosing a hereditary disease, the one who sees it and can warn is the primary care doctor. You see in the same family one child has autism and another has atrial fibrillation and that has a lot to do with it.”

Given this, the expert also believes that family doctors should have training on “creating gene trees and interpreting genetic reports” to understand and communicate them. “The delay in diagnosis that Spain has is almost five years compared to 1.2 in Europe, and it will not be solved if we do not implement these new technologies,” Caracedo Alvarez argued.

Adrian Lerena Ruiz, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Director of the University Institute for Biosanitary Research of Extremadura (Inube).

While for Adrian Lerena Ruiz, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Director of the University Institute for Biosanitary Research of Extremadura (Inube), Primary has “vital role” in modifying the environment and disease so that it does not occur or manifest itself too late. “This is already vital and in the future it will be much more,” the specialist specifies.

Llerena Ruiz is also the coordinator of the Medea project, whose aim is to increase the effectiveness of treatment, reduce unwanted effects and unnecessary toxicity, thereby reducing risks for patients and improving their quality of life. This initiative has the collaboration of Semergen and after its validation in more than 20 health centers of the Health Service of Extremadura (SAS), the specialist believes that “time” has come to lengthen this strategy of customization in the recipe for the whole country. A suggestion that Semergen has put together and will try to implement.

Angel Caracedo Alvarez, Director of the Xenomic Medicine Foundation (Sergas).