Customized Medicine: The Theranostic Revolution (NAPSA)—Something new is emerging in medicine anditis significant to many, particularly those suffering from arrhythmia, diabetes, epilepsy and asthma, as well as those being administered anti-coagulant drugs, as is commonin all cardiovascular surgery. This change began for several reasons. First, most experts agree drugs are effective on somewhere between 40 and 70 percent of the patients receiving them. Second, many drugs must be monitored to maintain appropriate drug levels as some drugs may becometoxic. The new model is expected to raise the standards of medicine. It merges diagnostic and therapeutic medicine. The concept is to give medical specialists the information they need, in “real time” right at the patient’s bedside, versus traditional laboratory blood work-ups done at the hospital or an off-site location, typically requiring hours instead of min- utes. New technologies will provide doctors with easy to use “tools” that accurately assess various individual patient conditions and responses. Theranostics is the word coined by PharmaNetics Inc., a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: PHAR) to describe this new trend. PharmaNetics is one of the trendsetters in this exciting new area of medicine and it recently received FDA approval for a technology designed to rapidly assess individual patient response to anticoagulant therapies. The system,called the TAS, is about the size of a telephone andis portable so it can be positioned at the patient’s bedside. A doctor takes a disposable test card the size of a credit card and inserts it into the analyzer. Adding a drop of blood to the test card activates the test. Depending on the test type, the ayy or) New on-the-spot testing may help patients get their drugs when needed and at customized dosages. results are available in less than five minutes. The company’s first approval came for the drug Heparin and now, another cleared test is about to enter the market for enoxaparin sodium, a low-molecular-weight Heparin. Both drugsfall into the anti-coagulant sector, which is PharmaNetics’ specialty category. For anti-coagulant dosing, theranostics is a particularly valuable development. Anticoagulants are administered in many operations because they allow physicians to operate inside the patient. Yet, inaccurate dosing, more likely to occur in the obese, frail, renally impaired or diabetic, can lead to complications such as serious bleeding or clots that can cause a heart attack or stroke. The future of medicine is unfolding. Rapid technologies provide knowledge that will ultimately transform the way we “take our medicine.” For more information, visit www.pharmanetics.com www.enoxtest.com. or
