Clinical applications of system regulation medicine

Abstract

Increasing incidence and poor outcome of chronic non-communicable diseases in western population would require a paradigm shift in the treatments. Guidelines-based medical approaches continue to be the standard rule in clinical practice, although only less than 15% of them are based on high-quality research. For each person who benefits from the 10 best-selling drugs in the USA, a number between 4 and 25 has no one beneficial effect. The reductionist linear medicine method does not offer solutions in the non-manifest preclinical stage of the disease when it would still be possible to reverse the pathological progression and the axiom "a drug, a target, a symptom" are still inconclusive. Needs additional tools to address these challenges. System Medicine considers the disease as a dysregulation of the biological networks that changes throughout the evolution of the pathological process and with the comorbidities development. The strength of the networks indicates their ability to withstand dysregulations during the perturbation phases, returning to the state of stability. The treatment of dysregulated networks before the symptomatological manifestation emerges offers the possibility of treating and preventing pathologies in the preclinical phase and potentially reversing the pathological process, stopping it or preventing comorbidities. Furthermore, treating shared networks instead of individual phenotypic symptoms can reduce drug use, offering a solution to the problem of ineffective drug use.