CNAPS and general medicine

Abstract

The identification of blood-based markers that help clinicians to diagnose, predict and monitor diseases is a great challenge. In general, the earlier a precise diagnosis and therapy can be applied, the higher the probability of a successful treatment of the patients. Cell-free nucleic acids have promising clinical potential because they can critically be dysregulated during pathogenic processes. They are usually released during cellular stress or tissue injury and related to inflammatory responses caused by a coordinated expression of numerous genes that initiate, sustain and propagate immune responses and tissue remodeling. Although there is a potential for the application of cell-free nucleic acids as clinical assays, their use as potential biomarkers in pathologic conditions is still at the experimental stage, partly due to different qualities of the analyses employed. With the exception of minimally invasive prenatal diagnostic tests, the approaches on circulating, cell-free DNA, mRNA and microRNAs applicable for clinical practice currently remain somewhat elusive.